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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/29562324">Guide Me Home</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/peachrosepetals/pseuds/peachrosepetals'>peachrosepetals</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>IT (Movies - Muschietti), IT - Stephen King</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Coma, Disabled Character, Eddie Kaspbrak Lives, Getting Together, Hospitals, Hurt/Comfort, Injury Recovery, Love Confessions, M/M, Near Death Experiences, The Turtle CAN Help Us (IT)</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2021-02-19</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2021-02-19</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-15 21:48:06</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>Teen And Up Audiences</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>No Archive Warnings Apply</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>21,305</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/29562324</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/peachrosepetals/pseuds/peachrosepetals</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>“I am here to offer you a choice,” Maturin explains patiently, finally seeming to answer Eddie’s questions. “You can move on from this world,” he says, and a plain wooden door appears, suddenly, out of nowhere, to the left of Eddie. It’s not close to him. It’s close enough that Eddie can see clearly what it is, but far enough that Eddie know’s he’d have to make the conscious decision to walk all the way to it. “Or I can take you back,” Maturin says, and another door appears to the right of Eddie, just as far as the first, but in a bright, gleaming gold this time. </p><p>For a second, Eddie doesn’t breathe. The choice seems so <i>simple</i>, so <i>obvious</i>. Of <i>course</i> he wants to go back! He’s only forty years old, he has a whole life ahead of him! He’s only just got the Losers back, and they killed that fucking clown! There’s nothing left to hold him back! He has a life in New York to get back to, a wife and — </p><p>A wife and… </p><p>A wife and nothing else but <i>lies lies lies</i>.</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>Eddie Kaspbrak/Richie Tozier</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>16</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>161</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>Guide Me Home</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
      <p>This has been such a journey to write! I don't remember how long I've been working on it, but it's been at least a few months because I just wanted to get it right. My first rough draft was only 11,500 words, and it quite literally doubled in size and I can't believe it! Here it is, finally, and I am so excited to share it! I hope that you guys enjoy it as much as I enjoyed writing it! </p><p>Thanks as always to my best friend and beta <a href="https://archiveofourown.org/users/imnotinclinedtomaturity/pseuds/imnotinclinedtomaturity">imnotinclinedtomaturity</a>.</p>
    </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>After the world goes dark, Eddie doesn’t expect to open his eyes ever again — it’s therefore a surprise to him when he <em>does</em>.</p><p>As his eyes flutter open, he notices immediately that the heavy feeling pressing on his chest, the one that had been making it difficult for him to breathe, is gone. The realization is enough to cause him to inhale deeply, if for no other reason than he <em>can</em>. The feeling of his lungs inflating without any discomfort or pain is a relief, and Eddie lets the breath back out again slowly.</p><p>He realizes as he does so that he allowed his eyes to drift shut again, and he opens them slowly.</p><p>The world around him is white, nothing but white in every direction. He’s laying down on something, and as Eddie looks down, he realizes it’s a bed — well, a cot, more specifically. The kind you find in a hospital. For a moment, Eddie actually believes that he is in a hospital, but then he looks up again and realizes that he can’t be, because there’s nothing else here.</p><p>His brow furrows in confusion as he sits up slowly, wincing reflexively as he does, only — there is no pain. He looks down cautiously and moves his hands to his abdomen where, what felt like moments ago, there had been a huge gaping hole ripped straight through him.</p><p>There’s nothing there, now. He’s completely whole, as if the fight with It never happened.</p><p>A sense of foreboding starts to clog Eddie’s throat, and he stares wide-eyed at the sheer whiteness around him as he pushes himself free from the bed. At his sides, his fingers curl into fists, and he turns in quick, anxious circles as he searches for something, <em>anything</em>, in the vast nothingness that surrounds him.</p><p>Eddie can feel his heart starting to cramp with terror, a stutter caught in his chest, and aches for the inhaler he’d thrown into the fire what must have been at least an hour ago.</p><p><em>What the fuck is happening?</em> he wonders anxiously. <em>Where am I? Where the fuck is this place?</em></p><p>Wherever he is, it strikes fear into Eddie’s heart, and he wants nothing more than to get out. He’d never known what true silence was until now, and he can feel his skin prickling uncomfortably. The more he checks out his surroundings, moving swift on shaky legs, the more it becomes clear that there is nothing else <em>here</em>, and the sheer force of the vast emptiness nearly knocks Eddie flat on his ass with terror.</p><p>It’s just as the panic is truly beginning to set in that Eddie hears a voice.</p><p>“You’ve been asleep a long time,” it says, echoing all around him. Startled, Eddie jumps in place, and immediately raises his hands defensively.</p><p>“Who’s there?” he demands, glaring into the vast nothingness. He cranes his neck to look above him, the only place he <em>hasn’t</em> looked, but finds nothing.</p><p><em>Oh god, oh fuck, oh shit</em>, he thinks, twisting his body around again to check behind him, and then again to make sure nothing has appeared in the short moment he wasn’t looking.</p><p>As tends to happen when Eddie doesn’t know what to do, he gets angry. “Hey!” he shouts, when the person still hasn’t answered him. “Answer me you fucking <em>asshole</em>!” he adds rashly, shuffling backwards, towards the hospital bed.</p><p>His hands are shaking.</p><p>“Eddie Kaspbrak,” the voice replies, a calm, deep tenor. Eddie’s back locks up with rigid terror.</p><p>“How do you know my name?” he shouts defensively, eyes still darting around the bright nothingness he’s found himself in, even though he knows that it’s useless.</p><p>There’s nothing here.</p><p>“Who the fuck are you? Where are my friends?” he asks, voice quavering in the quiet, but there is no immediate response. Eddie is left, again, to his own thoughts and fears, and he scrambles at the back of his mind for some kind of memory that’ll tell him what the hell is going on. The last thing he remembers is Richie telling him he’ll be right back for him, and then —</p><p>Well… dying.</p><p><em>Oh god</em>, he moans inside his own head, and lets out a whimper into the quiet air. What happened to Richie? What happened to Bill? And Ben, and Bev, and Mike… Are they dead? Is <em>he</em> dead? <em>What the </em>hell<em> is going on?</em> he asks himself.</p><p>“I know all of you,” the voice says, calm, and Eddie jumps, pulled abruptly out of his panicked spiral of thoughts, only to be launched into a brand new one.</p><p><em>Pennywise</em>, he thinks, and trips backwards, until his back hits the hospital bed. True fear grips him hard, as he imagines what’s going to happen to him now. Pennywise has him trapped somewhere, maybe inside of his own goddamn mind, like he had Beverly twenty-seven years ago. Did he get caught in the deadlights? No, that was Richie, not him, and he’d thrown the spear straight into Pennywise’s throat, hadn’t he?</p><p><em>Fuck!</em> Pennywise should have died, then! Eddie <em>killed</em> him, he <em>killed </em>that motherfucking clown, and now he’s back and he’s going to torture Eddie and —</p><p>Running on sheer adrenaline, Eddie shouts “I’ll fucking kill you, asshole, I swear to god! Don’t come near me or I swear I’m going to—” Eddie’s voice cracks as he fails to come up with a proper threat. He can feel his throat closing up as he waits for some kind of response, but it doesn’t come.</p><p>Eddie’s mind scrambles for answers, for any indication of what the hell might be going on. He doesn’t really remember what happened, his memories a tangled blur. He’d told Richie to go, hadn’t he? Before he… before he died, maybe. He told Richie to go, but why? Where had the others been, while Eddie was laying there bleeding to death on the cistern floor? Fuck, where had they <em>been</em>?</p><p>And then Eddie remembers — he remembers telling the others how to kill Pennywise. <em>Make him small</em>, he’d said, and all the others had run off into the main cavern to do just that. Eddie remembers hearing them shout insults at him, remembers telling Richie that the others needed him, that he needed to <em>go</em>, <em>now</em>.</p><p>They’d killed Pennywise. Surely they’d killed him?</p><p>“You’re dead!” Eddie screams when he finally manages to get his breath back again. “We fucking killed you!” he adds, desperate now. He can feel his legs give out on him at the same time as his ass hits the side of the bed, misses the landing, and hits the ground <em>hard</em>. Tears fill his eyes, half from pain, half from fear, and he glares up into the blank sky and screams, “We killed you!” around a sob stuck in his throat.</p><p><em>Oh god</em>, he thinks, <em>Oh god, we came back here and for </em>what<em>? </em>he wonders, allowing the tears to overwhelm him. He shoves his face into his hands and just lets himself <em>cry</em>, shoulders shaking as he thinks of his friends. If he’s here, in whatever the fuck this place is, all alone, what happened to the rest of them? Are they somewhere here too, or maybe in their own nightmare of Pennywise’s devising? Eddie thinks of Richie, of one of the last things he’d said to him (<em>“I fucked your mom.”</em>) and wishes more than anything that he could change it.</p><p>Suddenly, just as Eddie’s tears are reaching a crescendo, a sense of calm settles down on his shoulders and floods through his veins. Eddie shudders at the touch, hiccuping over another broken sob, and raises his head to stare up into the sky.</p><p>“What—” he tries, voice cracking. “What are you doing to me?” he tries again, this time managing to shape the words with his tongue. The calmness settles deeper inside of him, and then an all-consuming <em>knowing</em> settles into his soul.</p><p>“He is dead,” the voice promises, obviously referring to Pennywise. The tone is soothing this time, grandfatherly, deep, and even before the voice speaks, Eddie knows what it's going to say.</p><p>Pennywise is dead. He’s really dead. He can’t hurt Eddie anymore.</p><p>The knowledge sits there in Eddie’s mind for a long moment, seeping into him. He feels his limbs relax as he lets it in, and closes his eyes. His lips are still parted on half-spoken words, but after a moment, they drift shut too.</p><p>Pennywise is dead. He’s <em>dead</em>.</p><p>Eddie shudders at the thought, and finally opens his eyes. He stares dumbly at nothing. “Okay,” he mutters to himself, “Okay.” He just needs to sit with that for a minute. He knows somehow that it’s <em>true</em>, and sure this could all be some crazy, made-up mind game that Pennywise is playing on him, but it doesn’t feel like it is. Pennywise had always felt like madness, but this voice? It feels like benevolence.</p><p>Inhaling deeply, Eddie lets out a slow breath before managing to compose himself.</p><p>“Who are you?” Eddie asks again, quieter this time. His voice is shaking, and his ass hurts from falling so hard, but the fear feels farther away, now, just out of reach, like the voice is blocking him from feeling anything but calm.</p><p>“Maturin,” answers the voice finally.</p><p>Eddie nods his head. <em>Maturin</em>. Okay. Sure. Maturin. Whatever that means.</p><p>Before Eddie can ask another question, however, an image floats through his mind of a large turtle swimming through the stars in the sky, galaxies and nebula rushing by. On its back sits world, after world, after world — and then it's gone.</p><p>Eddie blinks, shocked. He doesn’t know how Maturin did that, put that image in his head, and while it’s a more thorough answer than Eddie could have asked for, it’s still vaguely horrifying to have something shoved into his mind like that. He shakes it off as best he can, and considers it.</p><p>“Uhm, so are you like… a god?” he asks disbelievingly. Eddie’s never really believed in god, but if he’s being honest with himself, after what he’d seen down there in the cistern, after what he’d seen when he was thirteen, it wouldn’t much surprise him.</p><p>“I am a guardian,” Maturin explains simply but dismissively, to the point where Eddie feels like he shouldn’t pry further. It sounds almost like Maturin wouldn’t tell him even if he asked, like a disgruntled adult who doesn’t feel the information is relevant.</p><p>Without missing a beat, Maturin repeats, “It is dead,” and another wave of <em>knowing</em> overwhelms Eddie.</p><p>It is dead. Pennywise is dead.</p><p>Right. Eddie understands. Pennywise is dead, but… “What happened to the others?” he asks. Some of the forced calm that had been holding his emotions hostage seems to drain out of him, a little at a time, and Eddie finds himself able to worry again.</p><p>It’s a question Eddie <em>needs</em> an answer to, and yet an answer that Eddie dreads.</p><p>“They are safe,” Maturin assures him.</p><p>Eddie’s shoulders sag in relief, and he nods mindlessly at the news, his head spinning. Fuck, they’re safe. Thank god they’re safe. Eddie doesn’t know what he would have done if anything had happened to them. Not after everything they’d done.</p><p>And Richie. Eddie doesn’t know what he would have done if something had happened to Richie, especially not after Eddie had done everything he could to save Richie from the deadlights.</p><p>But what about Eddie? Is he dead? Where is he? Why is he here?</p><p>“And…” Eddie hesitates, after a moment. “And me?” he asks a little breathlessly, nervous for the answer.</p><p>He expects a sense of sadness to imbue him the same way Maturin had made him feel calm, like Maturin’s feelings had been covering Eddie’s, but it doesn’t happen. Instead, Maturin simply repeats, “You have been asleep for a long time.”</p><p>Eddie immediately feels frustrated by the answer, and he glares up at the nothing above him furiously.</p><p>“You already said that!” he snaps, annoyed again. His anxiety over his own death is bad enough without Maturin acting all fucking <em>mysterious</em> about it. He just wants a straight fucking answer, is that too much to ask? “What the fuck does that even mean? And where am I? What am I doing here?” he demands, questions quickfire in the still air. His chest heaves with the ache of asking them, and he has to force his mouth shut before he can ask anything else, afraid, already, to know the answer to <em>these</em>.</p><p>“Eddie Kaspbrak,” Maturin replies, voice gentle but stern, “I try to help where I can,” he explains ambiguously. Eddie feels his hands curl into fists at his sides again, ready to angrily snap <em>what the fuck does that mean</em>, but Maturin doesn’t give him the chance, instead continuing, “You are between life and death. Your life hangs in the balance…”</p><p>Through the white nothingness comes an image, pressed to the center of Eddie’s eye. He can see himself, clothed in a blue hospital gown, face paler than the sheets and so fucking bloodless Eddie is shocked to witness his chest move with each breath. He can hear the beep of machines, and a soft, blurred sound in the background, as if someone is speaking. It’s a voice that Eddie thinks he recognizes, and then it’s gone.</p><p>Eddie blinks the image out of his eye, and stares, shocked.</p><p>“I am here to offer you a choice,” Maturin explains patiently, finally seeming to answer Eddie’s questions. “You can move on from this world,” he says, and a plain wooden door appears, suddenly, out of nowhere, to the left of Eddie. It’s not close to him. It’s close enough that Eddie can see clearly what it is, but far enough that Eddie know’s he’d have to make the conscious decision to walk all the way to it. “Or I can take you back,” Maturin says, and another door appears to the right of Eddie, just as far as the first, but in a bright, gleaming gold this time.</p><p>For a second, Eddie doesn’t breathe. The choice seems so <em>simple</em>, so <em>obvious</em>. Of <em>course</em> he wants to go back! He’s only forty years old, he has a whole life ahead of him! He’s only just got the Losers back, and they killed that fucking clown! There’s nothing left to hold him back! He has a life in New York to get back to, a wife and —</p><p>A wife and…</p><p>A wife and nothing else but <em>lies lies lies</em>. Slowly, the same thoughts that had been going through Eddie’s mind since before they’d descended into Its lair drift back through his mind. He hadn’t wanted to die, but… he’d been so sure that he would. He’d wanted nothing more than to go home, but to what? The same thing he’d left twenty-two years ago, when he’d stepped foot out of his mother’s house for what he thought would be the last time, and walked right back into two months later?</p><p>Everything that he’d learned with the Loser’s that summer — the manipulation, the placebos, the realization that he was <em>brave</em> — had disappeared within two months of leaving Derry, and Eddie had found himself right back on his mother’s doorstep.</p><p>He never really left it again. Myra was everything his mother had been, and he’d gone right ahead and married her anyway. His life was a constant refrain of fear and illness and <em>you’re too weak, Eddie bear, you </em>need<em> me, let me take care of you</em>. When he’d packed his bag to come out here to Derry, he’d filled almost an entire suitcase with medications that Eddie didn’t even <em>need</em>, and it had only taken a few hours for Eddie to remember that he wasn’t sick, that he’d <em>never</em> been sick, and yet back in the cistern, he’d <em>still</em> used his inhaler as if it weren’t filled with camphor water and… and… what did Eddie really have to go back to?</p><p>He was stuck in a dead-end, boring job that he’d held for fifteen years, even though he hated it. He was a senior risk analyst with no hope of going anywhere else, making more money than he needed for a man who never spent a dime on himself outside of doctor's visits he didn’t need and medication that did nothing for him. His marriage had been dead in the water from the moment he’d said <em>I do</em> — probably even before that, if he’s being honest — and he and Myra both knew it.</p><p>He didn’t really have anything to go back to. He didn’t have a life, not really. He’d been living a goddamn nightmare for twenty-two years, and he couldn’t even begin to fathom how to make a change big enough to make a difference.</p><p>He did have the Loser’s now, though. Surely they would be there to help him? But they also had lives of their own to get back, and Eddie couldn’t imagine any of them could have also fucked their lives up so bad that they wouldn’t want to go back to them. Maybe Bev, because she had always been in the same boat as Eddie in some way, with a parent who hurt them in different but fundamentally similar ways. But Bev would have Ben, and would Eddie have anybody, really? Would any of them really want to put up with all of the bullshit that had eroded Eddie away into a nervous wreck? He’d always been a hypochondriac, he knew that, but this was somehow <em>different</em>.</p><p>Would they even stay friends, after all of this? It had been twenty-two years for some of them, twenty-seven for even <em>more</em> of them. They didn’t know each other anymore. They might have acted like best friends back in the Jade of the Orient, but that was akin to a high school fucking reunion. You might stay in touch for a few weeks, maybe a few months, after seeing each other again, but eventually, it all faded away...</p><p>What if they forgot each other again? The very idea of it makes Eddie’s soul ache, and he gasps back a sob stuck in his throat. He squeezes his eyes shut in pain just <em>remembering</em> them. Remembering that summer, and the summers that came after as they each slowly started to drift away until there was no one but him, and Richie, and Mike… and then they were all gone. For twenty-two years, Eddie had forgotten the people who had meant the most to him, and the idea of getting them back, only to lose them again, is more than Eddie can take.</p><p>It takes a long moment, but eventually Eddie opens his eyes to stare up into the nothingness and blurts out, “I saved their lives, didn’t I?” He asks it like a question, but it’s not <em>really</em> a question at all. He says, “I saved Richie from the deadlights, and I told the others how to kill Pennywise, and I…” Eddie trails off, chest aching with the bone-deep knowledge that he has done so much more with his life in the past forty-eight hours than he has in twenty-two years.</p><p>Maturin says, “Yes.”</p><p>Eddie nods. He doesn’t have a reply for that. All he can think is, <em>isn’t that enough?</em></p><p>Before he knows it, hot tears are streaming down his cheeks again, and Eddie reaches up in astonishment to wipe them away. He hadn’t even realized he’d begin to cry. His chest hurts <em>so bad</em>. Slowly, Eddie wraps his arms tight around himself and squeezes hard.</p><p>“Fuck,” he gasps and shakes his head. He can feel himself shaking, but it isn’t from the cold. Something like a burning pain rips through his heart when he thinks about dying, but more than anything he just wants to know — “Will they be okay?” he asks through shaking lips.</p><p>Maturin makes a deep noise that Eddie can’t begin to articulate, and then he says “Let me show you.”</p><p>For the third time, images ripple forward against Eddie’s eyes, until it’s all that he can see. He gasps, and he’s back in the blackness that was Its lair, a stark contrast to the white place he’d been in before. It’s too dark for him to see <em>anything </em>here. There are strong, warm arms wrapped around him, a desperate grip against his skin, and hot, warm tears soaking into his neck. He can hear screaming around him and the roar of a collapsing building.</p><p>“Come on Richie, we have to go!” someone is saying, but all Eddie can really hear is the desperate, wet gasping pressed into the column of his neck. “Let’s go man, let’s go!” another someone is saying — Ben, or Bill maybe…</p><p>“No,” Eddie hears Richie whimper against his ear, and, with a shock, Eddie realizes who it is that’s holding him. “No, no, no!” Richie screams, and there’s a grappling sensation, like Eddie’s body is being shoved around. Richie doesn’t let go of him, and then Eddie hears “We can still help him guys, we can still help him!” screamed in a desperate plea so heart-wrenching that Eddie can’t bear to hear it.</p><p>He gasps out a choked sob of his own, but it goes unnoticed in the flurry.</p><p>Someone pries Richie’s arms from him.</p><p>“No, please, let go of me!” Richie screams, scrabbling for Eddie, his fingertips grasping at the edges of Eddie’s jacket, and then slipping on through. “Please, no, we can still help him, we can <em>help him</em>!” Richie begs, and Eddie feels another sob wrench free of him. The sound turns into a gasp, and despite the fact that it’s a memory Maturin is showing him, the reaction seems to have happened in real time because Richie screams “He’s breathing! Guy’s he’s breathing, <em>please</em>, <em>help me</em>!”</p><p>There’s another desperate scramble, another scream, this time of pain, and then Richie’s holding him in his arms again. Eddie knows it’s Richie because of the shudder in his breathing, the tears dripping down onto Eddie’s face now, the way Richie’s hands are cupping his cheeks, searing in their warmth.</p><p>“Stay with me Eds,” he begs, gasping the words around broken sobs, “We’re going to get you out of here…”</p><p>“Richie, come on!” Someone yells — Mike?</p><p>“We have to get out of here!”</p><p>Eddie can hear it, the sounds of the cave falling apart around them. His heart drops to the pit of his stomach, and for a moment he wonders <em>did we make it out alive</em> until he remembers that Maturin had promised him <em>yes</em>, that Maturin had shown Eddie himself in a hospital bed.</p><p>“He’s alive, guys, <em>help me</em>!” Richie screams again, and finally, finally, more arms grab at his body. Eddie can feel it as someone grabs his legs, as Richie releases his face, and scrambles around to grip him under the arms, and lift him up. Eddie feels himself be cradled against Richie’s chest even as he grunts, even as he <em>runs</em>, and feels warm.</p><p>“Why did you show me that,” Eddie gasps as the images leave his mind. He can feel the tears dripping freely down his face now, and his heart <em>hurts</em>. He doesn’t understand. “I asked if they’d <em>be okay, </em>why did you show me that!?” he demands, letting out a harsh sob. His hands are trembling as he reaches up to dash the tears away, and he swallows thickly, glaring into the white nothing. “Why!?” he shouts, when he still hasn’t received an answer.</p><p>“To show you what you missed,” Maturin answers. Eddie expects him to sound remorseful, but he doesn’t.</p><p>“Well, I didn’t want to see them <em>when it happened</em>!” Eddie screams, clawing at his face in frustration. “I — I — I knew they’d — They’d be upset and they’d — They’d mourn me but —”</p><p>“Did you?” Maturin accuses, piercing Eddie straight through the heart in a place of deep, deep self-hatred that told Eddie that they might cry, but that they hadn’t known him long enough as an adult to really <em>mourn</em> him.</p><p>At that moment, he hates Maturin for understanding him so well.</p><p>“Show me something else,” he demands, shaking his head roughly, glaring into the nothingness. “Show me — you said I’ve been asleep for a long time. Show me how they are now. Show me how they’re doing now,” he begs, his breathing harsh and heavy as he attempts to pull himself together and stop crying.</p><p>He just wants to know that they’ll be okay. He just wants to know if he can move on without leaving something important behind.</p><p>Maturin says, “As you wish.”</p><p>Eddie feels his eye open to the images again, and shudders at the sensation. He feels rubbed raw, as an image solidifies around him. He’s in the hospital room again — he can tell from the mint walls and the beeping of a heart monitor. He isn’t looking down on his own face this time, but at the ceiling. As Eddie settles into the moment he realizes that this time, he can move his own gaze, as if he’s inhabiting his living body and borrowing it to take a peek into the real world. He’s certain that he’s not actually moving even as he turns his head and gazes at the man sitting beside him.</p><p>It’s Richie.</p><p>Maturin hadn’t told him how long he’d been sleeping — all he’d (rather unhelpfully) said was “a long time”. Eddie isn’t sure how long “a long time” is, but from the sound of it, it had been at least more than a few days. So why is Richie still at his bedside?</p><p>Richie… does not look good. He looks like he hasn’t shaved in a few days, a dark scruff dotted around his jawline, and his eyes have dark bags underneath them. He’s dressed in a clean t-shirt with a zip-up hoodie tight around his biceps and Eddie realizes — that’s one of his hoodies. One of the blue ones he’d packed into his bag before he’d come to Derry.</p><p>It doesn’t fit Richie very well, and Eddie can’t imagine how he’d gotten it other than Richie going through his luggage to find it. He’s not sure he can bear to consider <em>why</em>.</p><p>It looks good on him, despite the small size.</p><p>The heavy sensation of crying is still crowding against Eddie’s chest, and the sight of Richie in Eddie’s jacket makes it strangle him tighter. He has to swallow thickly to kick it back down, and even then only because he worries what’ll happen if he cries just then.</p><p>He can’t be certain, but when he’d sobbed during that memory of Eddie’s near-death, it had felt like Richie had <em>heard it</em>. He doesn’t want Richie to hear him cry again.</p><p>Instead, Eddie takes in the deep lines on Richie’s face, the obvious signs of pain and fatigue, and wishes that he could wipe them away.</p><p>“What are you still doing here?” a voice Eddie had almost forgotten about over these last couple of days says, cutting through the thick silence of the hospital room. Eddie only realizes that Richie is staring at Eddie’s face when Richie doesn’t look away to answer her.</p><p>“The same thing I do every day, Pinkie,” Richie says in a hollow tone. “Taking over the world.”</p><p>Myra doesn’t laugh, but Eddie wouldn’t have expected her to. She scoffs instead, clearly unimpressed with Richie’s sense of humor — not that Richie seems all that jazzed about it right now, either. Eddie doesn’t remember a time he’d heard Richie sound like this.</p><p>Eddie hears the sound of a chair being dragged closer to his bed, and turns his head to finally take in Myra. She looks as put together as she always does as she slips into a chair on the opposite side of Eddie from Richie. She’s done her hair and makeup, and in contrast to Richie, doesn’t look as if she’s lost a day of sleep.</p><p>“Well I don’t know why you keep coming back here,” Myra sneers, tossing her blonde hair over her shoulder, and reaching out to take Eddie’s hand in hers. It dwarfs Eddie’s, and Eddie can feel the soft clamminess of it. He tries not to recoil in disgust, but now with his memories returned to him, with the knowledge that Eddie never loved Myra and she was just a replacement for his mom when she died, he can’t stand the thought of Myra touching him.</p><p>He knows it’s unfair. She’s his <em>wife</em>, and he’s lying in a hospital bed in what appears to be a <em>coma</em>. She’s allowed to be worried.</p><p>The problem is, Eddie can’t help thinking that she doesn’t look worried at all.</p><p>“There’s been no change in the last few weeks,” Myra mutters in a volume that is much too loud to really be a mutter, but sounds just as begrudging. “All the rest of your little friends are long gone, so why are <em>you</em> still here?” Myra asks shrewdly, and something about her tone reminds Eddie so distinctly of his mother that he doesn’t know how he never noticed it before now.</p><p>Richie doesn’t answer her.</p><p>Myra makes a “harumph” noise. “Don’t know why I even let you in here,” Myra snarls to herself, squeezing her fingers tightly around Eddie’s.</p><p>“You couldn’t make me leave if you tried,” Richie snaps, and his tone is so hostile that Eddie’s head snaps to look at him. There’s a look of deep resentment in his gaze, a flash of anger that burns hot there.</p><p>Even before Myra responds, Eddie knows it was the wrong thing to say.</p><p>“I’m his wife!” she challenges him harshly. “And I could have you kicked out of here in a heartbeat,” she hisses, glaring at Richie. Eddie can see the way that Richie clenches his jaw in reaction to this, how his teeth grind together for a moment, before he inhales deeply, and lets his shoulders sag in defeat.</p><p>“I know,” he mumbles back, avoiding Myra’s gaze now. “Thank you for letting me stay,” he adds, and at best it's begrudging, but it seems to pacify Myra. Her grip loosens on Eddie’s hand.</p><p>“You’re welcome,” she replies pompously, and they both shut up.</p><p>In the silence, Eddie finds himself wondering <em>why</em> Myra is letting Richie stay. If he’d had a moment to think about what would have happened after Myra showed up, it would have been the Losers being banned from Eddie’s hospital room. At best, he’s shocked at Myra’s kindness, and at worst, he’s wondering what it is she’s angling for here.</p><p>It only takes a moment for Eddie to make the connection. It had been the same, with his mom. Once Eddie had gotten old enough to realize that he didn’t have to do every single thing she said, she’d started using Eddie’s friends as bargaining chips. She’d allow him to stay at their houses for longer and longer periods of time, knowing that if she did, Eddie would turn around and take his medicine just the way she’d asked, or stay home watching movies with her on her birthday, or allowing her to coddle him when he got sick.</p><p>Myra had always been much the same way, giving Eddie what she thought he might want because she knew if she did, then Eddie would owe her.</p><p>She was allowing Richie to stay because she thought it might get her something from Eddie when he woke up.</p><p>Eddie clenches his teeth at the very thought. He hates that he’s allowed both his mother and Myra to use him like that. He hates that he ever thought it was okay. How much of a tyrant has Myra been to Richie, to the rest of his friends, just for the satisfaction of knowing that she’s doing Eddie a favor by letting them stay here?</p><p>Eddie wonders if Myra ever blamed them for Eddie’s… accident. The thought of it makes him ache for his friends. He knows his wife well, can only just imagine the venom she’s spit at them, and he wonders how Richie can still be around to take it.</p><p>Eddie blinks away a new set of tears, and suddenly the vision fades from his mind. His brow furrows immediately, and he blinks a few more times in confusion before he finally asks. “Wait, that’s it? What about the others?” He can’t help the frustration in his tone as he waits for a response.</p><p>“You asked to see them as they are now,” Maturin responds gravely. Eddie feels himself inflating with frustration, ready to scream, but Maturin continues, “I can only show you what your body has been there to witness.” His voice is calm, not unkind, but very serious.</p><p>Eddie deflates almost immediately.</p><p>“Right,” he mutters dully, and crosses his legs on the floor. He swipes a hand through his hair roughly, shoving it back against the top of his head for no other reason than to avoid yanking on it the way he’s so sorely tempted to do.</p><p>Of course, it’s not as simple as — as — whatever the fuck Eddie had been imagining. Maturin has done nothing so far to suggest that he can show Eddie just <em>anything</em>. Eddie himself has been in all three visions, so it makes sense that the only things Eddie can see are things he was there for or whatever. It’s just that… Eddie had really been hoping to see more than that.</p><p>He just wants to know if his friends are going to be okay without him. Would it be so bad, if he died? The idea of going back is terrifying to Eddie. He doesn’t know if there's anything worth going back <em>for</em> — that was the whole reason he’d asked — and so far all Maturin has shown him is Richie falling to pieces over Eddie’s nearly dead body and Myra treating Richie like shit, neither of which has done anything other than make Eddie feel <em>sad</em>.</p><p>He wants to know how long it’s been.</p><p><em>A long time</em>, Maturin had said, and Myra had commented that there’s been no change in Eddie for weeks. Richie’s still there, though, sitting at his bedside, refusing to leave, and it just doesn’t make <em>sense</em>. Why is Richie still there? When did everybody else leave? Had they forgotten Eddie already, now that they were gone? Was that why Richie hadn’t left his bedside?</p><p>There are so many questions that Eddie wants the answers to so bad, but more than anything else, he just wants to see his friends.</p><p>He rubs his hands over his face and begs Maturin, “Please just… let me see them. All of them, or as many of them as you can get into one room. Before they left.”</p><p>Maturin doesn’t answer this time, but he does drag Eddie along into another memory.</p><p>“The doctors say he’s recovering well,” Bev announces as she walks into Eddie’s hospital room. Eddie’s already looking in her direction, so he doesn’t have to turn to see her.</p><p>She looks much the same as the last time he’d seen her except cleaner, more put together. She’s still in kids’ clothes, faded blue jeans that hit her mid-calf, and a long-sleeved white shirt. The only thing she’s missing is the key around her neck that she’d worn the summer of ‘89 and the thought makes Eddie smile.</p><p>She looks healthy, too. There’s a glow in her cheeks that hadn’t been there at the restaurant, and her eyes are bright. Eddie almost wants to say she looks happy, except she isn’t smiling as her eyes land on Eddie’s body. In fact, she frowns the moment she looks at Eddie, and the crease in her brow becomes obvious. There are worry lines all along her face that hadn’t been there before, and Eddie wonders, <em>how long had I been asleep when this happened?</em></p><p>Unaware of who else is in the room just then, Eddieisn’t sure what kind of response to expect, but when Richie asks, “Then why hasn’t he woken up yet?” in a shockingly loud, harsh tone, Eddie immediately flinches. He turns to his right to find that Richie is sitting at his bedside again, only this time he looks a hell of a lot worse.</p><p>The dark circles under his eyes are even more prominent than in the last memory, set into this sallow skin. His face looks gaunt, like he hasn’t been eating very much, and the messy, greasy look to his hair suggests he hasn’t showered in a few days either. His beard is even more grown in than when he’d been with Myra, making it rather prominent on his face, and it isn’t exactly a good look for him, either. The bottom is a lot more grey than the rest, betraying Richie’s age.</p><p>Looking at him, Eddie can see the grief pure on his face, and it makes his heart ache. God, is this what he’s doing to his friends? To Richie? Making them suffer, because he hasn’t decided whether or not he’s going to wake up?</p><p>Unable to face that thought just now, Eddie forces himself to look away. He almost regrets it, when he takes in the look of deep sympathy playing out on Bev’s face. There’s a gentle understanding to her gaze as she steps forward, moving into the space on the other side of Eddie’s bed.</p><p>“His body has been put through a lot, Richie,” she explains sadly, taking Eddie’s hand gently in hers. Unlike Myra’s touch, it doesn’t make Eddie want to recoil. In fact, it’s soothing, her skin soft and warm against the cold of his own.</p><p>Growling in frustration, Richie snaps back, “don’t you think I know that?”</p><p>Bev flinches back, eyes a little wide and wary. Richie glares at her for a long moment, his chest heaving with anger, and then, suddenly, it’s like he deflates. His face absolutely crumples and Eddie wants to cry. He’s never seen Richie look like that, <em>ever</em>.</p><p>“Sorry,” Richie mutters, sniffling. It doesn’t occur to Eddie that Richie is holding his hand until he lets go, and he misses the warmth immediately. Richie shoves his face into his hands roughly, miserably, and his shoulders start to shake.</p><p>“Oh, Richie,” Bev whispers, biting her lip and staring at him sadly. She doesn’t reach out to touch him, to comfort him, something that confuses Eddie. He wants to beg her to go to him, but she doesn’t. She looks <em>tempted</em>, almost desperate to do just that, but she doesn’t, and Eddie doesn’t understand why.</p><p>If he were awake, he’d already have Richie in his arms, hugging him tight and allowing him to cry into Eddie’s shoulder instead. Eddie’s done it before when they were kids, on nights when Richie couldn’t sleep because of the nightmares and cried softly in Eddie’s bed, unwilling to tell Eddie what was actually wrong.</p><p>Eddie still doesn’t know what used to make Richie cry like that, but it hadn’t been near as bad as the look on Richie’s face just a moment ago, before he’d hid it in his hands.</p><p>He aches to hold Richie, to make all of his sadness go away.</p><p>“It’s going to be okay,” Bev finally says after a long moment of allowing Richie to cry. She bites her lip, tears welling in her own eyes, and squeezes Eddie’s hand. “It’s going to be okay, Richie, I promise.”</p><p>“How do you know that?” Richie asks hoarsely, voice thick with tears. When he looks up at Bev, his face is shiny and wet, eyes and nose a deep, painful-looking red. It offsets the darkness under his eyes, makes them look even more hollow.</p><p>Bev offers him a watery smile. “Because he’s still alive, Rich. Against all the odds,” she explains soothingly, the tears thick in her throat as well. Eddie watches as she swallows heavily past them, and keeps talking. “He’s been in and out of surgery for weeks, and the doctors say he’s getting stronger. He’ll wake up, Richie, I promise.”</p><p>Her eyes are gentle as she nods at Richie, her voice as encouraging as possible for someone holding back tears. Richie stares back at her brokenly, before nodding as well.</p><p>Richie goes back to crying softly into his hands, and Bev closes her eyes to visibly compose herself. After a moment, she takes the seat to the right of Eddie, and stares up into his face instead.</p><p>“Hey baby,” she murmurs softly to him, petting her fingers over the back of Eddie’s hand. Eddie wants to close his eyes at how gentle and tender it feels. When was the last time someone touched him like that? Not Myra, certainly — she could play gentle with him, but it didn’t feel tender, and more often than not she was likely to grip onto Eddie firmly and direct him to where she wanted him to be.</p><p>Bev touching him like this is everything that Eddie hadn’t known he’d been missing, and he finds himself crying again.</p><p>“We’re all waiting here for you when you’re ready to wake up, okay?” Bev offers sweetly after another moment. “And we’re not going to forget each other again, I promise,” she adds with a little laugh. “We’ve already checked. Ben had to head out a few days ago, and I was just talking to him this morning. He still knows who we all are,” she explains, sounding a little happier now. “He misses you,” she continues thoughtfully, as if she can <em>feel</em> that Eddie needs to hear it. “He’s sad that he couldn’t stay — work, you know — but I told him that you would understand,” she reassures him and pats the top of his hand.</p><p>Eddie wishes that he could tell her that he does understand. He <em>does</em>. He’d known his friends had lives outside of Derry now, lives that they would need to get back to, and just hearing that Ben hadn’t wanted to leave is more than enough.</p><p>And he remembers! He still remembers them! Maybe the magic died with Pennywise. Maybe Eddie doesn’t really have to be so scared.</p><p>Having said her piece to Eddie, Bev turns back to Richie again. He’s still sitting quietly on Eddie’s other side, sniffling now, but not crying. When Eddie looks at him, he can’t help feeling like Richie looks a little dead-eyed.</p><p>“Rich,” Bev says, drawing Eddie’s attention to her. “We’re all here for you, you know,” she tells him confidently, nodding her head fiercely when Richie doesn’t immediately respond. “We’re not going to leave you, either.”</p><p>Eddie doesn’t fully understand what she means by that, but Richie seems to. His lips twitch in a smidge of a smile, and he nods in return. “Yeah. I know,” he agrees.</p><p>Seeming appeased by this, Bev releases Eddie’s hand and gets up. “Well, I better step out and let Bill come say goodbye. He’s leaving this afternoon,” Bev explains as she turns around to leave. “I’ll be by tomorrow, give Mike a chance to visit with Eddie before Myra comes in,” she explains quietly.</p><p>She’s quiet as she leaves. For a moment, Eddie wonders why Bev had to step out for Bill to come in, and then it occurs to him that he might still be in the ICU. They mentioned he’d been in and out of surgeries, and if he’s in the ICU, he’s probably limited to two visitors at a time.</p><p>Bev had stepped out so that Richie wouldn’t have to.</p><p>Eddie’s chest tightens. He watches Richie closely then, realizing a little belatedly that Richie had mentioned being on tour at dinner the other night. Something melts inside of Eddie as he realizes that Richie clearly hasn’t left his side in weeks. He’s dropped everything for Eddie. For <em>Eddie</em>. Eddie doesn’t know whether to laugh or to cry, so he does both.</p><p>It hurts, seeing this whole thing tear his friends up. A part of him is shocked that any of them are still here, and yet deep down inside of him, he isn’t surprised at all. Of course they’re still here for him. Did he really expect them to just up and leave? Did he really think that after twenty plus years of being without each other, they’d be willing to let each other go again?</p><p>Eddie knows that <em>he </em>isn’t willing to. Eddie knows that if it were any of his friends in this situation, he would do the same thing. Hell, he’d risked his own life to save Richie’s because Eddie doesn’t know what he would have done if Richie had died.</p><p>If Richie had been the one to get hurt down in the cistern, Eddie probably would have reacted just as passionately. And he knows that if it were Richie in this bed, Eddie wouldn’t leave his side either.</p><p>“Hey,” Bill says, drawing Eddie out of his thoughts, and sitting down in the seat Bev had vacated some time ago. Eager to see his friend, Eddie turns to look at him, and feels relief fill his veins. There’s just something so comforting about seeing the other Losers alive and well.</p><p>Bill looks healthy, and like Bev before him, there’s a lightness to him that hadn’t been there at the Jade of the Orient. It looks like a weight has been lifted off of his shoulders, a weight Bill had forgotten he was shouldering. He looks <em>good</em>, dressed up for travel and well put together.</p><p>“Hey,” Richie replies hoarsely. He clears his throat awkwardly, and tries to hide the fact that he’s been crying.</p><p>Bill doesn’t buy it. “How are you doing?” he asks gently in a voice similar to Bev’s, like he’s treading lightly. His gaze is sympathetic.</p><p>Richie shrugs, rather than answer, and turns to look out the window. Bill stares at the side of Richie’s face for a long time, before sighing audibly and turning his attention on to Eddie instead.</p><p>“Hey buddy,” Bill greets him, smiling. “I heard you’re healing pretty well,” he adds, eyes flickering to where Eddie is sure the bandage is wrapped around his body underneath the hospital gown. Bill’s lips twitch, like it’s hard, even now, to imagine Eddie’s injuries. He looks away quickly, back to Eddie’s face, which seems to be a much safer area to look at.</p><p>“We really miss you, you know,” Bill tries to say jokingly, in an obvious attempt to relieve some of the tension filling up the room. He glances over at Richie, and then back to Eddie when Richie doesn’t so much as twitch in response. “Especially Trashmouth over there,” Bill stage whispers, like it’s a secret, and obviously trying to drag <em>something</em> out of Richie, though <em>what</em>, Eddie doesn’t know. “I’ve never known him to be so quiet,” Bill teases, winking at Eddie’s prone body.</p><p>For the first time, Eddie realizes that Bill’s stutter is gone, and he marvels at that. Ben hadn’t forgotten them after leaving Derry, and Bill’s stutter is gone. Maybe the magic really is dead.</p><p>Bill’s humor is quick to disappear when Richie doesn’t immediately jump in to tease him back, or otherwise defend himself. It seems to bring Bill back to himself, because he sighs and says, “But you know, I really can’t stay much longer. I wish I could, I really do, but… I have to get home,” he explains regretfully, and he truly does look like the last thing he wants to do is leave.</p><p>Eddie aches with the knowledge, his heart swelling with a mix of happiness and sadness. His friends love him, there could be no clearer truth in the world, and he was hurting them.</p><p>Eddie doesn’t want to hurt them. He realizes then, with sudden clarity, that he wants to go back.</p><p>Seeming to pull himself back together, Bill smiles at Eddie and says, “So it would be really nice if you could maybe wake up now,” he teases, but there's a sadness to his voice this time that hadn’t quite been there before, like he knows that Eddie isn’t going to wake up for him, but he wants it so <em>so</em> bad.</p><p>There’s a beat where no one says anything. The beep of Eddie’s heart monitor is the only sound in the room.</p><p>Bill sighs.</p><p>“Tried that already,” Richie finally interrupts, turning to offer Bill a half-smile. Bill’s eyes are a little wet when he meets Richie’s gaze, but he huffs a quiet laugh regardless. “Asshole intends to keep us waiting,” Richie adds with a soft huff of his own, and glares playfully at Eddie. “I told him if he wakes up I’ll…” But Richie doesn’t continue. Instead, he turns to stare back outside the window, his lips trembling slightly.</p><p>Richie tangles his fingers together in his lap, and holds on tight.</p><p>Eddie feels his brow furrow. Richie’ll what?</p><p>Bill doesn’t say anything for a long time. He just stares at the side of Richie’s face cautiously, thoughtfully, like he’s trying to decide if he should say something or not. Finally, Bill leans in closer to Richie and asks, “Are you going to tell him?”</p><p>Richie doesn’t move. He doesn’t so much as twitch. He looks frozen in place, like the smallest move could break him. Bill bites his lip, but presses on, “You should tell him.”</p><p>Eddie blinks in confusion, and the memory dissolves.</p><p>Tell him what? What should Richie tell him?</p><p>“Have you decided?” asks Maturin, breaking through Eddie’s thoughts before he can even truly begin to consider what Bill had been talking about. Eddie’s eyes snap upwards, in the space where he’s decided Maturin must be, regardless of whether or not Eddie can see him, and nods his head slowly.</p><p>“Yeah… I mean,” Eddie mumbles, shaking his head to clear away the haze of confusion. He frowns, thinking about Richie and the way that he’d looked, sitting at Eddie’s bedside for so long. Sure, Bev and Bill had looked sad when they’d come to visit Eddie, but they hadn’t looked like <em>Richie</em>. Richie had looked absolutely <em>destroyed</em>. He’d been the only one there, too, in that first vision, and hadn’t Myra said that the rest of his friends were gone?</p><p>Eddie doesn’t understand.</p><p>He looks up again, and asks, “Why is Richie still there?”</p><p>There’s silence, for a long time, and then Maturin says, “He’s waiting for you.”</p><p>There’s no warning this time. Eddie doesn’t even get the chance to blink before he realizes that he’s back in the hospital room — only this time it’s dark. The lights are on, but the window is open and it’s clear that it’s nighttime.</p><p>For a moment, Eddie doesn’t understand what’s going on. He thinks, briefly, that he must have woken up without an answer to his question, and it makes him irrationally angry. He starts to rail against Maturin in his mind, thinking <em>what the fuck does that even mean!? </em>before he hears a quiet sob.</p><p>Eddie turns his head. Richie’s face is pressed against Eddie’s palm, and Eddie can feel tears dripping down Richie’s cheeks. He’s crying quietly, hiccuping over sobs the same way he had been down in the cistern, only softer this time, a little less frantic. He’s bent in half over Eddie’s bedside, so much so that Eddie can’t really see his face, but he can feel the heat of him from where Richie has pressed Eddie’s hand to his cheek.</p><p>“Wake up, Eddie,” Richie whispers, begging. His voice is hoarse, like he’s been crying for a very long time. “Please, just wake up,” he says again, “I’ll do anything just to hear your voice again.”</p><p>Eddie feels his heart launch into his throat, and suddenly he’s crying too. It hurts so fucking bad to see Richie falling apart like this.</p><p>Eddie wishes he could talk to Richie, that he could hold Richie back. But despite looking through his own eyes, Eddie knows that he can’t actually move his body. He knows, in fact, from Richie’s perspective, Eddie’s eyes aren’t even open. And he knows, above that, that this is just a memory.</p><p>Eddie couldn’t comfort Richie in this moment no matter how much he wants to, because it’s already happened.</p><p>“I just got you back,” Richie gasps after another moment, his voice sounding almost loud in the quiet room. Eddie’s lips tremble with anguish, because Richie looks so <em>alone</em>. “I’m not leaving you until you wake up,” Richie adds roughly, squeezing tight to Eddie’s hand.</p><p>Eddie closes his eyes, because looking at Richie like this hurts too much.</p><p>“Fuck,” Richie mumbles after a long moment of silence, and turns his head against Eddie’s palm. Eddie feels the soft, warm pressure of lips against his skin, and realizes that Richie is kissing the center of his palm.</p><p>It sends a jolt of shock through Eddie’s body, and he feels warm all over. His breath catches, surprised at the unexpected touch. Something like excitement sparks deep inside of him, and Eddie scrambles to understand.</p><p>“I never even got a chance to hold you,” Richie whispers against his palm, turning his head again so that Eddie is cupping his cheek. Eddie holds his breath, straining his ears to catch every last word of what Richie has to say. “You can’t die, Eddie,” Richie whimpers, shoulders shaking with his sobs. “Not yet. Fuck, Eddie, please… I never got to tell you…”</p><p><em>Tell me what!? </em>Eddie wants to scream, but he knows that Richie can’t hear him. A thought claws at the back of Eddie’s mind, a memory, <em>something</em> that he’d felt back when he’d first seen Richie in the Jade of the Orient. Something that he’s felt for a very long time, but that he’d buried long before he’d even left Derry.</p><p>He hears something of that in Richie’s voice, and begs him <em>tell me, Richie, just tell me</em>.</p><p>Richie doesn’t. He just continues to cry.</p><p>“Please wake up, Eddie,” Richie whispers, “Wake up and I swear to <em>god</em>, I’ll tell you. But you have to wake up first. <em>Please</em>.”</p><p>Richie doesn’t raise his head, but he does turn his face and kiss the center of Eddie’s palm again. His lips are so warm and chapped against Eddie’s skin. It doesn’t feel like anything Eddie has ever felt before in his entire life — not when his mom used to kiss him on the forehead, not when Myra used to kiss him before bed. It’s not quick and perfunctory, it’s long and leisurely and so fucking fierce that Eddie burns with it.</p><p>It’s something that Eddie has wanted for a long time, and as he stares at Richie he sees something in his eyes that tells him that maybe Richie has wanted it just as long.</p><p>Eddie’s heart bursts, and he <em>remembers</em>.</p><p>When Eddie was sixteen, the summer just before his senior year, his mom decided that they were going to move to New York to live with Eddie’s aunt. Her health had been declining for years, and Eddie’s mom had volunteered to come and care for her.</p><p>Eddie hadn’t had a choice. He was too young to live on his own, let alone fight his mother to stay behind in Derry, and he wasn’t naive enough to think that he could get away with running away, so he’d been forced to accept his fate.</p><p>He, Richie, and Mike were the last of the Losers left in Derry at the time, and even before he left, Eddie knew that everything was about to change. They’d watched Bev, Bill, Ben, and then Stan leave, and while all four of them had promised to call, to come back and visit, they never did. It was like something happened to you when you left Derry, because none of them could really believe that their friends would have just forgotten them like that.</p><p>The first time, sure. Maybe Bev just didn’t want to think about what had happened in Derry anymore, maybe she didn’t feel as close to the rest of the Losers as they had to her. But then Bill had gone, Big Bill who Eddie had been friends with since first grade, and it just <em>didn’t make sense.</em></p><p>So, by now, they knew. They knew that the moment one of them left Derry, they’d never hear from each other again. The realization that this was Eddie’s last chance to tell Richie how he felt had been a difficult pill to swallow, but in the end, he’d decided he had nothing left to lose.</p><p>This time, when Eddie remembers, it's not an image pressed to his eye by Maturin, it’s just a memory.</p><p>Eddie’s lying in the middle of his bare mattress, sheets stripped away and shoved into a bag at Eddie’s feet. He can hear the movers downstairs, dragging furniture out into the front lawn. He knows it’s going to take them a while to pack everything downstairs into the moving van, so he has time to laze about and wait for Richie to come say goodbye to him.</p><p>He’d reading a comic book Richie had given him for his birthday last year — <em>X-Men #4</em>, <em>The Brotherhood of Evil Mutants!</em></p><p>(Eddie had kept that comic for sixteen years, until his wife found it buried in a box full of Eddie’s old college things and threw it out. He hadn’t remembered what it was, then.)</p><p>He remembers now, and though the comic hadn’t really been anything special, it had been one of the few items not already packed up before the move. He and Richie had always read comics together, from their days in the hammock all the way through high school. It felt like home, holding that comic, flipping through the pages and scanning over the art, and Eddie was comforted by it.</p><p>He’s anxious. He hasn’t decided yet what he’s going to say to Richie when he arrives, but he’s promised himself that he won’t let Richie say goodbye without telling him how he feels. He keeps tapping his foot against the edge of his bed, his eyes darting from his comic to the door and back, over and over again. He’s not looking at his door when Richie comes in.</p><p>“Hey loser,” Richie announces himself, pushing Eddie’s door open without knocking. Eddie jumps at the sudden arrival, and frowns at his best friend, but doesn’t comment on the nickname.</p><p>“Hey,” he greets back instead, his voice a little subdued, and watches as Richie approaches the bed and flops down on it next to Eddie, uninvited, laying down too. Eddie rolls his eyes but knocks shoulders with Richie companionably anyway. He feels warm all the way down his arm where they touch, and only pulls away reluctantly.</p><p>“What’cha reading?” Richie asks, plucking the comic book from Eddie’s hands. Instinctively, Eddie snatches the comic back quickly and shoves it to the other side of his bed, next to his open backpack. Richie stares at him in shock, and Eddie grimaces.</p><p>“Woah, Eds, calm down,” Richie teases him, though he looks concerned. “You hiding a playboy or something?” he asks with a nervous grin.</p><p>Eddie huffs angrily and glares at the ceiling. “No fucknut, don’t be disgusting,” he spits at him, thinking <em>I just don’t want anything to happen to the comic if we screw around with it</em>. He doesn’t say the words aloud, though, because he knows he sounds ridiculous. It’s just that… Richie had given that to him, and Eddie doesn’t want anything bad to happen to it, not when… when soon it’ll be all Eddie has left of Richie.</p><p>“Right,” Richie replies dubiously, arching a brow at Eddie. Eddie groans, and shoves his face into his hands.</p><p>“Stop being an asshole, Richie,” Eddie hisses defensively. “I’m leaving today, remember?” he snaps at him, more harshly than he’d intended. He winces at his own words, but avoids Richie’s gaze, staring up at the ceiling instead.</p><p>“I know that, Eds,” Richie replies softly, his voice quiet and a little sad, and all it does is remind Eddie of why Richie is here right now. He’s been trying so hard not to think about it, not <em>really</em>. For the past week, he’s acted like nothing has changed, but now he has to face the fact that he’s <em>leaving</em> in the next few hours and… it’s just, this is all so fucking <em>unfair</em>.</p><p>He doesn’t want to go to New York. He doesn’t want to leave Derry. Or, well, <em>fuck</em>, he doesn’t want to leave Derry like <em>this</em>. He and Richie had promised each other <em>months</em> ago that they’d leave Derry together, that they’d apply to the same schools and leave at the same time and force themselves to remember each other if it was the last thing they ever did, and Eddie wanted that <em>so bad</em>, but then his mom had to go and screw it all up.</p><p>The anxiety and pain bubble up and over until Eddie’s blinking back tears, avoiding Richie’s gaze. He’s been pushing it all down for so long that it’s almost not a surprise that he’s falling apart right now, even if he doesn’t want to be.</p><p>He shouldn’t have waited until the last minute to talk to Richie, because now Eddie can’t even <em>think</em> of confessing to Richie when all he wants is to <em>stay here</em>.</p><p>Holding back his tears, Eddie reaches down between his and Richie’s body and scrabbles for Richie’s fingers. He takes Richie’s hand into his the moment their palms touch and hangs on tight. Richie jumps at the contact, but it’s only a moment before Richie locks their fingers together like they used to do as kids.</p><p>Eddie’s heart squeezes tight, and he bites his bottom lip.</p><p>Fuck, <em>fuck</em>, he’s going to lose this. In just a few short hours, he’s going to lose this forever, and he doesn’t know how to come to terms with it.</p><p>“Eddie?” Richie murmurs when Eddie doesn’t say anything else. He squeezes Eddie’s hand comfortingly in his, and waits him out. Richie is so rarely patient, but even for how much of a loudmouth he is, Richie has always known when to simmer down and take care of his friends.</p><p>And Eddie’s going to lose all of it.</p><p>“We can still try, right?” Eddie finally bursts out, his voice thick with tears. “We can still try to like… see each other again?” Eddie begs Richie, finally opening his eyes and turning his head on the bed to stare at Richie. Richie mimics his movements until they’re both staring at each other. Eddie has tears in his eyes that he’s trying to blink back, and Richie looks so, <em>so</em> fucking lost that Eddie wants to throw up.</p><p>“Of course, Eds,” Richie murmurs back, offering him an unconvincing smile. “You’ve got that list of schools we agreed upon, right? We’ll just pick one and…” But even as Richie suggests it, Eddie knows that it won’t work. There’s no guarantee that they’ll both get in, and even if they do, there’s no way to be certain that Eddie will remember <em>which school</em> they’d agreed upon.</p><p>Eddie suddenly lets out a broken sob, and rolls over to shove his face into his mattress. His arm hurts from the way he’s laying on it, but he refuses to release Richie’s hand.</p><p>“Eddie,” Richie whines, rolling into Eddie’s side and pulling him into a one-armed hug. “Hey, Eddie, don’t cry,” Richie begs him, shoving his face against Eddie’s cheek so that his cold nose is pressed against Eddie’s skin. Eddie can feel his breathing hot on his face, and wishes more than anything that he had the courage to turn and kiss him.</p><p>He doesn’t. He can’t. He’s crying too hard, and he can’t think of confessing to Richie right now when all Eddie wants to do is crawl into his arms and never let go.</p><p>He doesn’t want to go. He so desperately <em>doesn’t want to go</em>.</p><p>“Shh,” Richie whispers into his ear, rubbing his arm up and down Eddie’s side and squeezing the fingers of his other hand. “Hey, shh, it’s going to be alright,” Richie promises him.</p><p>“No, it’s not!” Eddie wails into his mattress, sniffling hard. Richie holds him tighter.</p><p>“Hey, you don’t know that,” Richie soothes him, “We don’t know what happens when you leave Derry, Eds, it’s all just —”</p><p>“You forget everything!” Eddie interrupts him, hiccuping over another sob. “You forget all of your friends and you promise to call and then you never do and — and — and —”</p><p>Eddie isn’t capable of completing that thought, merely continuing to cry into his stripped bare mattress. He’s getting tears and snot all over it and it’s <em>gross</em>, okay, it’s so fucking gross, but Eddie can’t bring himself to care.</p><p>“But we don’t know that for sure, Eds,” Richie reasons with him, voice so quiet and soft against Eddie’s ear. Eddie shakes in his arms but doesn’t answer. “What if… what if it’s not like that?” Richie suggests. Eddie goes to interrupt him, but Richie cuts him off and says, “No, listen. What if once you're on the other side, you just can’t communicate with those in Derry?” he asks, voice filled with hope.</p><p>Eddie wants to scream <em>that doesn’t make it any better</em>, but he doesn’t. He hangs onto Richie’s words, and begs the universe to let them be true.</p><p>“What if, once I get out of Derry too, I remember you and I come and find you, hmm?” Richie suggests, petting Eddie’s side. “What if we pick somewhere to meet in a year, and promise we’ll both show up? You can write it on one of your planners, and I’ll write it down in my old yearbook, and we’ll see each other again,” Richie promises him, jostling Eddie in his arms a little, and asking, “hmm? Hmm?”</p><p>Still crying, Eddie nods his head and says, “Okay,” even as he knows that it’s possible they’ll never see each other again. He wants nothing more than to hope Richie is right, that somehow this will all work out in the end. Maybe he’ll cross the Derry border and he’ll still remember Bill, and Ben, and Bev, and Stan, and maybe he’ll hunt down their numbers and they’ll remember him too, and they’ll all sit and wait for Richie to graduate so that he can come join them at last.</p><p><em>Maybe they haven’t forgotten</em>, Eddie thinks, hopes… <em>Maybe Richie’s right, and they just can’t reach us here in Derry</em>.</p><p>Eddie sobs harder, the fear bone-deep that it isn’t true.</p><p>Richie continues to hold him, rocking Eddie gently in his arms as he continues to cry. He murmurs, “it’s going to be okay,” over and over again, like a mantra they’re both holding on to. Eddie imagines turning to Richie and pressing his face into his chest, imagines digging his fingers into Richie’s shirt and never letting go.</p><p>He imagines kissing him, and Richie kissing him back, and Eddie still having to get up and go downstairs and leave for New York.</p><p>He can’t do it. He can’t put himself or Richie through that. He can’t imagine how much it would hurt to find out Richie likes him too, only to lose him almost immediately afterwards. What kind of a goodbye present would that be for Richie, anyway, to leave him behind with all of his memories of Eddie still intact, knowing that Eddie has forgotten him? Or if Eddie hasn’t forgotten, knowing that he won’t be able to see him again for over a year?</p><p>Eddie can’t do it.</p><p>He cries himself hoarse, and then cries for a little bit longer, and then finally sits up and wiggles out of Richie’s arms. He rubs his face raw against the palms of his hands, and then rubs his hands against his jeans, scrubbing the tears away.</p><p>“Sorry,” Eddie mumbles regretfully, avoiding Richie’s gaze.</p><p>“It’s okay,” Richie murmurs back, and knocks his shoulder into Eddie’s.</p><p>They sit in another long silence, in which Richie drops his head onto Eddie’s shoulder, and Eddie sits there and lets him. They don’t speak again until Eddie’s mom calls him downstairs, and then Richie grabs a pen and a piece of paper from off of Eddie’s desk, and sits down to write.</p><p>“Times Square, August 18th, 1993. One year from now,” Richie declares heartily, and nudges it into Eddie’s hands. Eddie takes it carefully, tears blurring at his eyes again. “I promise to meet you there.”</p><p>Richie’s grin is so young and boyish, filled with a fragile hope that Eddie is sure is reflected on his own face. Eddie forces a grin, and says, “I promise.”</p><p>When Eddie opens his eyes again, he’s back in that empty, white space, aching for what he’d lost. He doesn’t regret not telling Richie he loved him back then, especially not knowing what he does now. It wouldn’t have changed anything — Eddie still would have gone to New York, and by the time he was halfway there, he would have already forgotten Richie. He still would have gone twenty-two years without his best friends, and he still would have married Myra.</p><p>The only difference might have been that Eddie would have had one, last, shining moment with Richie before he walked out of his life for so long, but even then, Eddie doesn’t regret not doing it. If Richie means what Eddie thinks he means, if he wants to tell Eddie what Eddie thinks he wants to tell him, then Eddie is glad he didn’t leave Richie behind to suffer without him.</p><p>But that means that Eddie can’t leave him now.</p><p>He wants to go home. He wants a second chance. He wants to see his friends again, and have the life that had been stolen from him twenty-two years ago. He wants to see Richie and find out what it is that Richie wants to tell him, and even if it isn’t what he's hoping, he wants a chance to tell Richie that he loves him.</p><p>Richie stayed at his bedside for <em>weeks</em>, endured Myra and what Eddie can only assume was her hatred for a group of friends she’d never met. His friends had carried him out of the cistern and stayed with him in the hospital for as long as they could, and Eddie… well Eddie survived.</p><p>He wants to keep on surviving.</p><p>“I’ve made my decision,” he tells Maturin.</p><p>That same, grandfatherly air is in his voice when Maturin replies, “I am glad when I can help.”</p><p>Eddie asks, “How long has it been?”</p><p>“Fifty-eight days, Eddie Kaspbrak,” Maturin explains, and says, “Your family is waiting for you.”</p><p>Eddie smiles, because he knows that it’s true. He turns and faces the golden door, and without looking backwards, he moves towards it. It takes him fifteen steps exactly to reach it, and when he takes the doorknob in hand and opens it, the world goes black.</p><p>**</p><p>Eddie opens his eyes slowly. There’s a dull throbbing sensation in his head and in his torso and in his back that hadn’t been there when Maturin had shown him the Losers, and Richie, and Myra. It’s a new, annoying sensation that reminds Eddie he’s recovering. He can hear the heart monitor beeping behind him, the sound a little less steady now that Eddie is stirring, and there's light streaming in through the open window.</p><p>He’s groggy, unlike when he was in that strange, white, nothingness, and it takes Eddie a moment to realize that it’s because there are drugs in his system. It takes another minute for him to become aware enough to actually look around, and when he does, he’s disappointed to find that Richie isn’t in the exact same spot he’s been in every other time that Eddie has seen him.</p><p>Myra’s there, though, and she’s reading a book, her back turned towards Eddie. She hasn’t noticed that he’s awake yet, which Eddie has to admit is a relief. He needs another moment before he can even think of handling the incoming freak out he’s sure is coming</p><p>Eddie takes his first real, deep breath in a long while, and groans when it causes a searing pain to rip through his body.</p><p>Myra jumps, and turns to him.</p><p>“Eddie!” she shouts in shock, immediately dropping her book to the ground and reaching out with clammy hands to take Eddie’s in hers. Eddie recoils automatically, thrown off by her soft touch, and missing Richie’s calloused hands. He struggles against her, but her grip only seems to grow tighter, so Eddie gives up before he hurts himself.</p><p>“Eddie bear, how are you feeling? Are you alright? Are you in any pain, discomfort? Should I ask the nurses for more painkillers?” she asks him, leaving no room for an answer. A concern that Eddie hadn’t seen previously suddenly seems to reside in the soft, puffy grimace of her face.</p><p>Eddie hates it, recognizing for the first time in his life just how false it really is. He can see his mother in that look, the faux concern that had controlled Eddie’s life for so long…</p><p>Without waiting for any answer from Eddie, Myra immediately launches into a rant. “Oh, Eddie I told you not to come here! I told you that you couldn’t look out for yourself! I told you, didn’t I?” she demands of him, brow folding into a worried line, her lips trembling. “And now you’re here, in the hospital, and the doctors aren’t even sure if you’ll ever walk again! They said there could be brain damage, Eddie! <em>Bain damage</em>!” she presses, squeezing his hand between hers, and practically dry sobbing around the words.</p><p>Eddie doesn’t miss the fact that there aren’t any real tears, and he squirms under her touch. This all reminds him too much of his mother, and he doesn’t know how he’s never seen it before. <em>Crocodile tears</em>, they were called. Myra had been using them on Eddie their entire marriage, but this time he isn’t buying it.</p><p>“Where’s Richie?” Eddie croaks, finally finding his voice.</p><p>Myra immediately stops wailing, and stares at Eddie with wide eyes, as if she’s never seen him before in her life. Her mouth opens and closes like a fish, astonished. Then her face hardens, and she straightens up in her chair. The worry and concern are gone.</p><p>Eddie hadn’t answered any of her questions. Eddie hadn’t told her it was going to be okay, the way he used to when Myra made a fuss about something. Eddie wasn’t playing the docile husband Myra was so used to, and it was clear she didn’t know how to handle it.</p><p>“You mean that awful comedian?” Myra spits after a long moment, scoffing at Eddie. She finally releases his hand and tosses her hair over her shoulder, glaring hard at nothing. Eddie watches her bend to pick up her fallen book and place it on the table next to Eddie’s bed, all without looking directly at him. “He’s gone home, and it’s about time, too,” Myra says, her nose in the air. “He and the rest of your little friends are who put you in this position in the first place, and look what they’ve done! They’ve left you here all alone to fend for yourself! This is why you need me, Eddie bear. I’m the only one who can take care of you,” Myra continues in a haughty tone, talking too fast for Eddie to keep up with. His brain is still slow and sluggish from the drugs, but eventually Myra’s words seem to register with him, and Eddie goes still.</p><p>Richie went home? No… he couldn’t have. That doesn’t sound right. Eddie had just seen him, hadn’t he? When Maturin first showed him what was going on in real-time. Surely it hasn’t been that long since the first vision?</p><p>Besides, why would Richie have left? It’s been almost two months, and if Richie hadn’t gone home already, why would he go now?</p><p><em>Because it’s been nearly two months, and you still hadn’t woken up</em>, some part of Eddie tells himself, and he goes cold inside. Fuck, had he been too late? Had Richie really given up on him and left, after all this time? Before he could tell Eddie — whatever it was he was going to tell Eddie?</p><p>A slow trickle of panic seems to make its way into Eddie’s brain despite the drugs, and he turns his head away from Myra to check the other side of his bed again. There’s no sign of Richie there, not that Eddie even knows what to look for, but… had Richie really gone?</p><p>Eddie’s heart plummets, and he frowns hard at Richie’s empty chair. He knows, logically, that it’s not Richie’s fault if he finally went home. There were no signs that Eddie was going to wake up any time soon, and it doesn’t reflect badly on Richie if he needed to get back to his own life now. Eddie also knows that this isn’t his only chance to ever see Richie again, he <em>knows</em> all he’d have to do is call him and Richie would come running right back but… Eddie wants Richie to be here <em>now</em>. He doesn’t want Myra, and he sure as fuck doesn’t want to go home with her.</p><p>Before he can really think about it, Eddie croaks, “You’re lying.” He’s surprised at himself for all of a moment, and then the thought rings true. It would not surprise Eddie at all if she <em>was</em> lying.</p><p>Myra stops dead again. Her eyes are wide as she stares at Eddie, clearly shocked at his words, and then they narrow.</p><p>“What did you say, dear?” she asks, sickeningly sweet, daring him to repeat himself.</p><p>Eddie grits his teeth and manages, “Where’s Richie?”</p><p>Myra glares at him. “I told you, he’s gone home, where he belongs,” Myra dismisses him easily, but she’s avoiding Eddie’s eyes. She’s looking somewhere around Eddie’s chin, and her chest is heaving like she’s holding back from screaming at him. Eddie’s eyes narrow, and he shifts on the bed, looking for the call button on the side of his bed. The moment he finds it, he jams his fingers against it over and over again.</p><p>He needs someone else in here to tell him what’s going on and <em>where Richie is</em>. Surely someone knows where Richie is, and maybe one of the nurses can go and get Richie for him. Anything would be better than being stuck here with Myra all alone, with her lies and deceit and crocodile tears.</p><p>Suddenly, Eddie wants nothing more than to be free of her <em>right fucking now</em>.</p><p>“Eddie?” Myra asks him, half-hysterical, “Eddie, what are you doing? Who are you calling?” she demands, grappling for Eddie’s hand and finally forcing it away from the call button. Eddie struggles against her for just a moment, until his chest starts to hurt too badly and he’s forced to stop, gasping roughly through the pain. Myra opens her mouth as if she’s going to say something else, but then someone knocks lightly on his room door and strides right on in.</p><p>It’s a dark-skinned nurse in green scrubs, her hair a little wild around her face, and the minute Eddie sees her he <em>just knows</em> that she hates Myra near as much as Eddie does. She looks like she’s barely hiding her annoyance at whatever racket Myra is making now, and she’s side-eyeing Myra in a way Eddie recognizes all too well.</p><p>Her eyes go almost instinctively to Eddie, however, and the moment she realizes that Eddie’s awake, she gasps “Oh!” entirely cutting off whatever she’d been <em>about </em>to say to Myra, and hurries over to Eddie’s side instead. “You’re awake,” she says, smiling down at him as she bustles over in front of Myra and starts taking his vitals. Her index and middle finger press against his pulse point, and she stares at his chest as she counts his respiration rate.</p><p>Eddie smiles wanly at her and nods. He means to ask her <em>where’s Richie?</em> but before he can, she launches into a series of questions of her own: <em>do you remember your name, do you know where you are, are you feeling any pain?</em></p><p>Myra keeps trying to interrupt her, making a huge fuss about the poor lady “harassing” her husband, and demanding that she move out of the way so that Myra can hold Eddie’s hand, but the nurse merely speaks over her, clearly quite adept at dealing with Myra after nearly two months.</p><p>Eddie dutifully answers her questions, hoping the faster they get through this, the faster he can ask about Richie: <em>my name's Eddie Kaspbrak, I’m in the hospital, I’m not in too much pain</em>.</p><p>The first two answers are true. The third one, perhaps, is a bit of a lie. But Eddie doesn’t want the nurse to pump more drugs into his system, to make his head any cloudier than it is.</p><p>The nurse grabs Eddie’s chart from the end of his bed and begins noting things down as she talks to him. She reassures him that everything is going to be okay and that the doctor will be with him after he’s recovered a little more to discuss what’s happened. She asks Eddie to just stay calm and let her know if the pain gets any worse, and then reminds him that he’s doing very well considering his condition. She admits that he’s been in a coma for a couple of weeks, and pats his hand reassuringly as she says, “But you’re healing very well, Mr. Kaspbrak. The doctor will be glad to hear that you’re awake.”</p><p>Eddie endures all of this, and when the nurse finally seems to be done talking, he asks her a little impatiently, “Richie, where’s Richie?”</p><p>The nurse looks at him oddly for a moment, equal parts concerned with Eddie’s lack of concern with his welfare, and understanding of Eddie’s desire to locate his friend but eventually she smiles. “Your friend went down to the cafeteria about twenty minutes ago. He said that if you woke up, I should tell you ‘I’ll be back before you know it,’” she explains cheerily, a pleased smile on her face.</p><p>Eddie feels his chest fill up with warmth, and he finally relaxes, closing his eyes.</p><p>After checking over the monitors keeping track of his vitals, the nurse pats at his foot and takes her leave. Myra had shut up around the time the nurse was telling Eddie about his prognosis, and she’s still silent now. The silence feels heavy in the still room, both of them aware that Myra has just been caught in a lie.</p><p>Eddie knows, even before he opens his mouth, what’s coming next.</p><p>“Myra,” he starts, doing his level best to keep his voice steady.</p><p>“Oh Eddie bear, I’m so sorry!” Myra immediately wails, bursting into more fake tears. She shoves her face into her hands, and blubbers there. “I just — I just — he’s such a horrid man. He’s been horrible to me, Eddie bear!” she cries, her shoulders shaking, hiccuping around the words, and Eddie hates her. He <em>hates</em> her with every fiber of his being, because he knows that she’s lying, and he knows that she isn’t really crying, and he just wants her to leave so fucking bad.</p><p>“Myra,” he says again, interrupting her. Myra wails harder, as if she can drown out the sound of Eddie’s voice if she’s just loud enough. “Myra, listen to me,” he urges, his voice raspy and hoarse from the weeks of disuse. He can feel himself growing angrier and angrier with her until finally, he shouts as loud as he can “Goddamn it Myra! Shut up!”</p><p>Immediately Myra goes silent. She draws her face away from her hands and stares at Eddie in such stunned disbelief that he remembers the same moment he’d stood up to his mom a million years ago. She’d looked just as shocked as Myra does now.</p><p>Her eyes are red, and there are actual tears on her face, but Eddie isn’t falling for it this time. He can see right through it now, and he’s sick of it. He’s sick of being told that he’s weak, and that he can’t take care of himself, and that there’s something <em>wrong with him</em>, because there isn’t.</p><p>There isn’t.</p><p>He and his friends killed a supernatural <em>space clown </em>recently. Eddie is far from weak.</p><p>“Myra, go home,” Eddie says, and rolls his head away from her so that he doesn’t have to look at her anymore.</p><p>Myra makes a squawking noise. “What? Eddie bear, what are you saying?” she asks, her voice high pitched and strained.</p><p>“I want you to go home, Myra,” Eddie repeats, clearing his throat in an attempt to get rid of some of the raspiness there. It doesn’t help. “I don’t want you here,” he insists, glaring at the ceiling.</p><p>From his peripheral, Eddie sees Myra shaking her head. There’s a little disbelieving smile on her face as she reaches out to take Eddie’s hand again. Eddie snatches it away from her.</p><p>“Eddie, what are you talking about? You’re sick, and I need to take care of you, now,” she explains patiently, as if Eddie really does have brain damage. “I can’t leave you. I’m your wife.”</p><p>The very concept burns deep in the pit of Eddie’s stomach, and he spits “I want a divorce,” at her with as much vitriol as he can manage.</p><p>Myra gasps. “Eddie!” she shouts, appalled. “You don’t know what you’re talking about! You hit your head when that house collapsed, and now you’ve lost your mind!” she contends, beginning to cry again, big heaving sounds in the small hospital room. “I cuh-cuh-can’t leave you like this!” she wails, begging, “Please don’t make me go, Eddie bear!”</p><p>Myra throws herself at Eddie, as dramatic as possible even now, and clings to his arm. Disturbed, Eddie fights against her, straining his body and crying out in pain with each jerky movement. “Myra, get off me!” Eddie yells at her, “You’re hurting me!” he objects, gasping when he pulls too hard to the right and feels his body scream in protest at him.</p><p>Immediately, Myra releases him, looking miffed.</p><p>“Eddie bear, you’re hurting <em>me</em>,” she whines, and takes his hand roughly in hers again. Eddie doesn’t manage to dodge the touch this time, but he does reach over the side of his bed and slam his fingers into the call button again, still wrestling against his wife.</p><p>Myra gasps. “Eddie!” she cries, “What in the world are you doing? Why are you acting like this?” she whines, finally releasing Eddie as the same nurse from before turns the corner into Eddie’s room.</p><p>Before Eddie can so much as open his mouth, Myra demands, “Nurse —” and then cuts herself off without completing the title, as if she’d never gotten around to remembering the nurse’s name. She seems to shake it off quickly enough, as flippant as she’s always been with people whose jobs she thinks are beneath her notice. “My husband has clearly lost his mind,” she alleges angrily. “I think he needs to be put back to sleep until he calms down. He’s speaking absolute gibberish, and I implore you not to listen to a thing he says!” she demands very seriously, crossing her arms over her chest with her left hand facing outward, her wedding ring glistening under the fluorescent lights — some kind of poignant gesture meant to intimidate.</p><p>The nurse stares at her for a long moment, her mouth turned down into a deep frown. Something about her expression suggests that Myra has been making impossible demands of her for weeks, and she looks just about fed up with it. She turns her gaze onto Eddie and asks him, “What’s going on here, Mr. Kaspbrak? Are you alright?” she asks seriously.</p><p>“No, I am not alright,” Eddie explains hoarsely, clearing his throat ineffectually again. He can feel his head spinning now with the impossible flurry of activity he’s been putting his poor body through in the last few minutes. “My wife refuses to leave. I don’t want her here,” Eddie says clearly, staring the nurse down and <em>begging</em> her to listen to him.</p><p>The nurse considers him carefully for a long moment, before turning to Myra. “Ma’am, I’m going to have to ask you to leave,” she starts, only for Myra to start screaming over her.</p><p>“You can’t make me go, I am his wife!” she screeches. “I am his primary caregiver, and you have to listen to me!” Myra insists, standing and stomping her foot against the ground.</p><p>The nurse glares at her, arms crossed over her chest. “Ma’am, you are disturbing my patient,” she starts, only for Myra to scream, “He’s my husband, and he is in a very fragile state of mind right now!”</p><p>The nurse argues back, “Your husband seems to be in complete control of his faculties, and until the doctor has assessed him fully and decided whether or not he needs someone else to make his decisions for him, it is my job to comply with any <em>reasonable</em> requests he may have!”</p><p>Myra stomps her foot again, and goes red in the face.</p><p>“He’s just woken up from a coma!” she bellows, “He needs me!”</p><p>“He needs medical treatment, ma’am,” the nurse shoots back, and points to the door. “And you are impeding his healing. I’m going to have to ask you to leave. Do not make me call hospital security,” she declares darkly, and stares Myra down.</p><p>Myra’s lip wobbles. Her hands clench into fists at her side, over and over and over again, until she finally slumps, defeated. Her eyes are a storm of anger when she turns to grab her things, her movements hostile. She doesn’t touch Eddie again, but her gaze says <em>we’ll talk about this later</em>.</p><p>Eddie doesn’t care, as long as she’s out of his room. His hands are shaking, and it takes him a long moment to realize that his heart rate has spiked as well. His breathing is a little uneven, something that seems to concern his nurse, because the moment that Myra has left the room, she’s at his side and coaxing him through a few breathing exercises.</p><p>Eddie’s just stood up to his wife for the first time in eight years, and through the foggy haze of pain, he feels nothing but relief.</p><p>The nurse fiddles with Eddie’s IV for a moment, and then pats at his hand soothingly. “We won’t let her back into your room until you give the say so, okay Mr. Kaspbrak? It’s going to be okay,” she says with a soft smile.</p><p>Eddie stares at her a little foggily. His limbs are beginning to feel lighter, his heart rate returning to normal, and some of the pain begins to seep out of him.</p><p>The nurse must have given him more pain medication.</p><p>Unable to process words at the moment, Eddie just nods his head gratefully at her.</p><p>She leaves after another moment of fussing, and Eddie feels his eyes start to slip closed. He doesn’t know how long he’s actually been awake, or how long he’d fought with Myra, but he does know that he feels suddenly exhausted. He doesn’t want to go to sleep, not before he sees Richie, but he’s not so sure he has much of a choice anymore...</p><p>There’s a knock on his door. Eddie snuffles at the sound, and opens bleary eyes, realizing after a moment that he had, indeed, drifted off. He shakes his head in an attempt to clear it of the fog there, and blinks at his doorway a few times, willing it to come into focus.</p><p>When it finally does, Eddie feels his heart jump in his chest.</p><p><em>Richie</em>.</p><p>He smiles automatically, soft and bleary-eyed, as he takes in Richie’s face.</p><p>He looks the same as he had earlier, when Eddie had asked to see how the Losers were right now — scruffy, tired, and all bundled up in Eddie’s jacket. He looks warm and soft, and Eddie wishes he could hug him.</p><p>Richie, on the other hand, looks a little bit like he’s in shock, his lips twitching uncertainty, and his eyes wet with tears. He isn’t crying yet, but it seems like he might start any second. Eddie wishes he could stop making Richie cry.</p><p>“Rich,” he whispers, his voice somehow even <em>more</em> hoarse than when he’d first woken up.</p><p>“Hey, Eds,” Richie replies, his voice cracking a little. His lips are trembling even as he breaks out into a smile, and his eyes crinkle at the corners. Richie lets out a soft huff of a laugh, and then sniffles quietly. “Heard you were asking for me,” he says, his voice teasing, eyes twinkling.</p><p>“Yeah, asshole,” Eddie croaks with a fond laugh, and tilts his head in Richie’s direction so it’s easier to see him. “I missed looking at your stupid face,” he teases back, grinning softly.</p><p>Richie laughs too, his grin growing bigger as he steps into the room. He’s staring a little dopily at Eddie as he says, “Missed seeing yours too.” His lips wobble a little, and he swallows thickly, staring a little stupidly at Eddie. Then he breaks out in another laugh and says, “Glad to see you're awake.”</p><p>His eyes are blazing with something Eddie’s fuzzy brain struggles to pick out, but it makes him feel warm all over and reminds him of why he wanted to see Richie in the first place. He opens his mouth to bring it up, but Richie starts talking before he can.</p><p>“Where’s the missus?” he asks, dragging his gaze away from Eddie and frowning at the other side of the bed. His voice is more stilted than before as he makes his way to what Eddie now considers <em>Richie’s</em> side of the bed.</p><p>Right. Myra. Eddie sighs, and feels his shoulders relax a little with the knowledge that she’s not here. “Myra’s gone. I sent her home,” he explains, his voice coming out sort of raw and a little bit dazed, because there’s a part of him that still can’t believe what he’s done. Richie seems just as surprised, because the moment the words leave Eddie’s mouth, Richie is reeling back from him in shock.</p><p>“You what?” he asks, a disbelieving laugh bubbling up in his throat. “Eddie, you just woke up and you’ve already kicked your wife out?” he jokes, though his tone is more unsure than anything else, like he can’t quite believe what he’s hearing. He still manages to laugh, clearly unable to help himself as he stares at Eddie.</p><p>Eddie nods his head, not quite able to muster up any laughter of his own. “I also asked for a divorce,” he adds, sounding almost astounded at himself. He’d done that, hadn’t he? He’d really done that. Eddie goes to smile at Richie, ultimately proud of himself for standing up to his wife, but Richie isn’t smiling back. In fact, he’s stopped laughing entirely, and he’s looking at Eddie with a half concerned, half assessing glance. Eddie doesn’t know what to do with that, so he frowns. “Is that really such a surprise?” he asks warily.</p><p>Slowly, Richie nods his head. “Yeah, it kinda is Eds,” Richie admits, his voice a low murmur. His face is doing something weird that Eddie can’t figure out, but he doesn’t look like he’s going to cry anymore. Instead he looks… something. It’s difficult to tell with his mind so addled with the drugs, but he forgets to be confused about it when Richie settles down in his usual chair and reaches for Eddie’s hand automatically, holding it gently.</p><p><em>Oh</em>, Eddie thinks to himself, and smiles. He grips Richie’s hand back and squeezes tightly, feeling reassured that Richie is <em>here</em>.</p><p>Surprised, Richie startles a little and looks down at their hands. When he meets Eddie’s gaze again, all of the tension seems to have drained out of Richie’s face, and his cheeks seem slightly flushed, like he’s been caught out. Eddie can’t stop looking at him and the way his entire demeanor seems to have softened. He’s staring at Eddie with this <em>look</em> in his eyes that feels so fucking familiar, and his lips are twisted up like he’s trying not to smile but he’s smiling anyway, and —</p><p>Eddie knows that look. He’s seen it a thousand times since they were kids.</p><p>For the first time, he understands what it means.</p><p>Eddie thinks he’s always understood, on some level, but after watching Richie sit as his beside for two months, after hearing him cry over Eddie’s broken body, there’s really no room to ignore it anymore.</p><p>Eddie takes a deep breath to settle himself, and squeezes Richie’s hand again.</p><p>“Richie,” Eddie murmurs, peering up at him ardently.</p><p>“Yeah, Eds?” Richie hums, still looking at him like Eddie is his whole world. Eddie shivers and doesn’t hesitate.</p><p>“You told me if I wake up,” he rasps, watching as Richie’s eyes slowly widen in shock, “You’d tell me something,” he continues, and squeezes Richie’s fingers <em>hard</em>.</p><p>“You —” Richie starts, shaking his head in disbelief. “I —” he tries again, and stops. “Eds?” he asks finally, voice having gone a little breathless. Eddie can’t tell if Richie is terrified, or just confused, but he definitely looks stunned.</p><p>“What did you want to tell me, Rich?” Eddie urges, heart beating harder with every second that passes. Richie seems to notice it too, because he glances behind him to the heart monitor and then back at Eddie with wide eyes.</p><p>He’s trying to figure out how Eddie knows what he said, Eddie’s certain of it, but there’s no way Richie will be able to put it together, not without Eddie explaining it to him.</p><p>He will. He’ll tell Richie all about it later, but for right now, he just wants to hear Richie say it.</p><p>“Richie?” Eddie asks, prompting him gently.</p><p>“Fuck, Eds,” Richie whispers, shaking his head. When he meets Eddie’s gaze again, he looks nervous. He starts to rub his thumb along the back of Eddie’s hand, before clearing his throat. “I, uhm,” he starts, tripping over the words already. He huffs out a laugh, and shakes his head. “Of all the dumb things I said to you while you were —” Richie stutters to a stop, avoids the words <em>in a coma </em>entirely, and continues, “that’s the thing you heard?” His grin is shaky as he stares at Eddie.</p><p>Eddie grins a little stupidly, and nods his head.</p><p>“Well I did promise,” Richie mutters to himself, and stares down at Eddie’s hand. His fingers squeeze reflexively around Eddie’s and then relax again, but Richie doesn’t say anything else. He just stares at Eddie’s hand in his until Eddie can’t take it anymore.</p><p>“I love you,” Eddie blurts out around the lump in his throat, and stares up at Richie breathlessly.</p><p>Richie’s gaze snaps back up to his, his eyes wide and a little disbelieving. “God, Eds,” he gasps, sounding absolutely <em>stunned</em>, and suddenly his eyes are wet again. “I love you, too,” he manages in a strained voice, and brings the back of Eddie’s hand up to his mouth to press a kiss there. His lips are trembling as he drags Eddie’s hand up even further to hide his face, and he sniffles quietly, exhaling shakily, like he really can’t believe this is happening right now.</p><p>Eddie can’t believe it either, and he lets out a giddy little laugh as he says, “That’s good,” a little fuzzily. “Because I’m not sure what I would have done if you hadn’t said it back,” he teases quietly, laughing again. Richie laughs too, the sound a little sniffly as he starts to cry for real, the feeling of warm tears starting to drip against Eddie’s hand.</p><p>Normally, he’d be grossed out about it, but this is <em>Richie</em> he’s talking about, and he’d put up with anything just for Richie not to let go of him again.</p><p>“Yeah, it’s not like you can run away right now,” Richie attempts to tease back, but his voice is hoarse and he has to clear his throat three times to get the words out around what seems to be a lump in his throat.</p><p>If he could, Eddie would shuffle closer to Richie, but whatever medication they’re pumping through him, Eddie can hardly feel his own body anymore.</p><p>“Eds?” Richie asks abruptly, finally lowering Eddie’s hand from his face. He places both their hands down gently on the bed, still holding on tight, and leans in close like there’s something he wants to say. Eddie smiles dopily up at him, waiting, and Richie laughs. “Oh my god, look at you,” he mutters to himself, and reaches up to cup Eddie’s face tenderly in the palm of his hand. Eddie nuzzles against it a little.</p><p>“Nevermind,” Richie finally says, shaking his head indulgently at Eddie, “You should sleep,” he suggests sweetly, rubbing the pad of his thumb against Eddie’s cheek. “I’ll be here when you wake up,” Richie adds in a reassuring tone.</p><p>“Promise?” Eddie croaks out, trying not to whine.</p><p>“I promise, Eds,” Richie whispers lovingly, “I’m not going anywhere.”</p><p>Eddie nods his head approvingly, still staring up a little dreamily at Richie. He knows Richie is right, he probably should sleep, but he doesn’t want to stop looking at Richie yet. He never wants to stop looking at Richie, <em>has</em> never wanted to stop looking at Richie — not from the moment Eddie met him. And now he doesn’t have to.</p><p>Which reminds him.</p><p>“Rich?” Eddie asks, blinking in an attempt to focus. His brain feels all foggy, and it’s beginning to grow really difficult to concentrate.</p><p>“Hmm?” Richie replies when Eddie doesn’t immediately continue, reminding Eddie that he’s trying to tell Richie something.</p><p>“L.A.,” Eddie breathes, shaking his head to clear some of the fog, “Need an apartment in L.A.,” he elaborates as best he can, trying to articulate the <em>I’m never leaving you again</em> that he’s too tired to verbalize.</p><p>Richie is silent for a long time, and then he says, “You’re coming to L.A.?”</p><p>Eddie smiles, and lets out a huff of a breath. “Yeah, asshole,” he mumbles, trying and failing to concentrate long enough to have this conversation. He blinks his eyes at Richie in an attempt to look at him, and watches as Richie’s face splits open into a grin. His eyes are fond as he cards back some of Eddie’s hair from his face.</p><p>“Yeah?” Richie teases him, eyes glittering, “What for?”</p><p>Eddie wants to roll his eyes so badly, but he doesn’t know if he manages it. “For you, fucknuts,” he says, aiming for patronizing and landing more on affectionate. Richie laughs at him, but it’s fond.</p><p>“So you wanna go apartment hunting, then?” Richie asks him in a tone that Eddie would normally consider teasing, except he can’t figure out what he’s being teased about. Frowning, Eddie nods his head. “I know a place,” Richie assures him with a laugh, “But there’s just one catch,” he explains.</p><p>Even more confused now, Eddie asks, “What?”</p><p>“It’s actually a house, and I’m already living in it,” Richie replies proudly.</p><p>Eddie blinks a couple of times in confusion, trying to piece together what Richie’s getting at, and then snorts inelegantly. “Shut the fuck up, Richie,” Eddie gripes at him, but he’s grinning as he lets his eyes slip closed, finally feeling like he can sleep peacefully now that everything important is settled.</p><p>Richie is still laughing at him when Eddie feels the medication starting to pull him under. He’s just giving in to it when Richie boops his nose and asks him, “You good with that, Eds?” in a tone so full of confidence that Eddie wants to smack him.</p><p>Instead, Eddie fights to open his eyes and fixes Richie with a look that he hopes is at least a little bit alluring. “‘Course, Rich,” he mumbles sleepily, the words almost a slur as he offers Richie a smile. “It’s got you,” he breathes affectionately, and laughs when Richie immediately turns bright red.</p><p>Instead he says, “‘Course, Rich,” as sweetly as he can manage, peering up at Richie enticingly. “It’s got you,” he murmurs coyly, and laughs when Richie immediately turns bright red.</p><p>**</p><p>
  <strong>6 months later</strong>
</p><p>It takes a month after Eddie moves into Richie’s house in L.A. for the Losers to make arrangements for them all to come out and visit them on a Friday and stay for the weekend. Eddie knows they would have come sooner, but between Eddie getting settled in, Mike’s tour of the United States, and Bev’s divorce and subsequent re-settling of her company, it’s been a bit difficult planning a time that works for all six of them.</p><p>Unfortunately for Eddie, the Losers are set to arrive within an hour of his last physical therapy appointment for the week, and while Eddie had wanted to reschedule it, Richie had been quick to put his foot down. He’d made the point that Eddie’s physical therapy appointments were more important than looking nice for their friends, and while Eddie knew Richie was <em>right</em>, that didn’t mean he had to be happy about it.</p><p>He’s been in physical therapy for nearly six months now, something the doctors had started about a week after Eddie had woken up. As it turns out, Myra hadn’t been lying when she’d told Eddie the doctors weren’t sure he’d ever walk again, but he’s been making some pretty significant progress. In fact, he’s able to rely on his cane rather than his wheelchair for longer and longer periods of time now, and while the doctors say he’ll probably need some level of support from his cane for the rest of his life, Eddie is at the very least excited to have a sense of independence again.</p><p>Eddie knows it’s <em>his</em> hard work that’s gotten him this far, but he’s thankful for Richie’s voice of reason on days when Eddie can’t work up the energy to fight against his own limitations, and he’s glad to have Richie around to remind him just how important his physical therapy is, even if it does suck.</p><p>So now, he's in their bedroom attempting to quickly get changed out of his physical therapy clothes and into a nice pair of jeans and a collared shirt that Richie had laid out for him.</p><p>“Bill just texted me!” Richie shouts down the hall, his voice muffled through the walls but steadily moving closer as he continues, “He just caught a cab. He said he’ll be here in about twenty minutes!”</p><p>“Sounds good!” Eddie huffs back, finally managing to kick himself out of his sweatpants. His legs are still sort of shaking from the last hour of his workout routine, because his therapist has really started pushing him thanks to all the progress Eddie has made. Unfortunately, it also means that Eddie tends to come home extremely exhausted.</p><p>He’s just managed to grab his jeans when Richie turns the corner into their room with a huge smile on his face. He doesn’t offer to help Eddie get dressed, which Eddie is grateful for — sometimes he just wants to do things on his own, even though he knows Richie would jump at the chance to help him if Eddie so much as asked.</p><p>“What’s up?” Eddie asks, arching a brow at him. “Aren’t you supposed to be cleaning the living room?” Eddie grunts at him as he shoves his trembling legs into his jeans and begins to pull them up.</p><p>“All done,” Richie says with a shrug, nodding his head back towards the front living room. “I’ve vacuumed, taken out the trash, and cleaned up all the shit that should have been in the office,” he explains proudly.</p><p>“Thanks, Rich,” Eddie grunts, exhaling sharply as his legs spasm painfully and he’s forced to relax his body onto the bed. He’s got the jeans up to his thighs now, bunched just under his ass, and he’s temporarily given up. He knows he’s going to have to use his aching abs to lift his ass off the bed to get the jeans the rest of the way on, and he just isn’t ready to put in that energy right now. “What about the guest room?” he asks, turning his full attention onto Richie.</p><p>Richie nods his head immediately. “It’s all set for Ben and Bev. Brand new sheets and everything,” he reassures Eddie, leaning in the door frame with his arms crossed over his chest, a challenging look on his face. Eddie narrows his eyes at him.</p><p>“And the air mattress?” he asks.</p><p>“Sitting in the office ready to be blown up before bedtime. And,” he exclaims brightly, waggling his eyebrows, “I’ve even set out pillows and blankets for both the air mattress <em>and</em> the pull-out. Sexy, right?” Richie teases.</p><p>Eddie laughs and rolls his eyes fondly, but it really <em>is</em> kind of sexy that Richie had thought ahead about all of this before Eddie could even ask him to do it. It’s just that they don’t have a lot of room to host their friends and they’re working with what they have. Richie’s place isn’t the largest of their friends’ houses by a long shot, and definitely isn’t the first place any of them would have picked to have a group sleepover, but Eddie’s still recovering and not really up for traveling, so all of their friends have graciously agreed to come to L.A. for the weekend.</p><p>“What about the others?” he asks, glancing over his shoulder at the clock on their bedside table. “When are they expecting to arrive?”</p><p>Richie hums and pulls out his phone to check his messages. His hair hangs cutely in his face, and if he were closer, Eddie would push it back with his fingers and comb through it. “Mike said he just got off the 90 freeway, so he’ll probably arrive about the same time as Bill, and Bev said she and Ben will be here in five minutes about… three minutes ago!” Richie replies cheerfully, grinning like a cheshire cat when he meets Eddie’s gaze.</p><p>“What the fuck, Richie?” Eddie chastises him, suddenly finding the burst of adrenaline needed to yank his pants up over his ass. He manages to balance himself on the balls of his feet in an attempt not to strain his abs too much, and gets his jeans all the way on, all while Richie laughs at him. “Why didn’t you warn me!?” Eddie yells at him breathlessly, sitting back down on the bed, red in the face. He thinks he can feel a cramp forming in his right calf, and decides that tonight is <em>definitely</em> a wheelchair kind of a night.</p><p>“Relax, Spagheads,” Richie shushes him, still chuckling lightly. His eyes are shining brightly as he pushes off the doorway to meet Eddie on the bed. He settles in close until he’s standing between Eddie’s legs, and wraps his arms around Eddie’s shoulders. Eddie cranes his neck back to stare at him. “You know they wouldn’t care if you’d stayed in your sweatpants and workout shirt, right?” Richie asks him softly, head tilted in a way that Eddie refuses to think of as cute.</p><p>Grumbling, Eddie shrugs his shoulders and says, “Yeah, but the last time any of them saw me, I was still in the hospital wearing that stupid plastic gown.”</p><p>The rest of the Losers had been quick to come back and visit Eddie after he’d woken up, and they’d kept up the visits the entire five months he’d been stuck in Derry, though he wasn’t great company and they couldn’t stay long. It had still been nice.</p><p>“I’m sure they’re going to miss that sexy sight,” Richie quips back, winking playfully at Eddie and reminding him rather abruptly about the way Richie used to stare at his ass through the stupid open back of the gown.</p><p>“Shut up, Richie,” Eddie complains, reaching out to swat ineffectually at his chest. <em>Richie</em> might have enjoyed the view, but Eddie’s pretty certain nobody else had.</p><p>Richie laughs, and before Eddie can land a strike, Richie catches Eddie’s wrist and leans in to kiss him.</p><p>It’s a quick kiss, more of a peck than anything else, and it leaves Eddie dissatisfied. He immediately pouts at Richie and tugs on his wrist in an attempt to pull Richie back in.</p><p>“So needy,” Richie teases, though he goes willingly. Eddie growls at him but chooses not to reply, instead drawing Richie in to press their lips back together again. He nips playfully at Richie’s bottom lip and sighs, tilting his head <em>just so</em> to deepen the kiss.</p><p>Eddie hasn’t let Richie get away with a peck like that since the first few weeks of their relationship when Richie seemed too terrified to do anymore, and now Eddie takes every chance he can get to deepen their kisses.</p><p>Richie pretends to hate it, but the secretive smile he walks away with every time isn’t nearly as secretive as he thinks it is.</p><p>“Come on, grumpy pants,” Richie says as he pulls away, the soft suction of their lips parting making Eddie shiver. “I think I just heard Ben and Bev pull up.”</p><p>Eddie frowns, but lets go of Richie. “I’ll never understand how you can hear shit all the way outside from here,” Eddie mutters and pushes himself to his feet.</p><p>“It’s because I’m blind, Eds,” Richie replies cheerfully, offering Eddie his hand wordlessly. Eddie takes it, but only because his legs are still shaking. “The rest of my senses have to work double time to make up for it.”</p><p>“You’re not blind, Rich, what the fuck,” Eddie mutters back, taking three shaky steps over to where he’d left his wheelchair next to the bed. He collapses into it gratefully and releases Richie’s hand. “And that’s not how it works,” he adds matter-of-factly.</p><p>“I might as well be,” Richie shoots back just as the doorbell rings. He drops one last kiss onto Eddie’s lips as Eddie gets himself settled in his wheelchair, and then turns to answer the door. Eddie watches him go with a small smile on his face, so fucking thankful that he gets to have this.</p><p>After everything he’s been through, he feels like he deserves at least this much.</p><p>It seems to take no time at all for the rest of their friends to arrive once Richie has let Ben and Bev in, and then they’re all squeezing in around Richie’s dining table. Richie ordered take-out — <em>not </em>Chinese — and filled up everyone’s glasses with the fancy wine from his wine cabinet. Eddie isn’t partaking because he’s still on a couple of medications and despite Richie reassuring him one glass of wine isn’t going to hurt him, Eddie isn’t willing to risk it.</p><p>Conversation starts out light that night, the focus more on how Eddie is settling in than his actual recovery, and Bev takes it upon herself to tease Richie mercilessly.</p><p>“Married life really suits you, Trashmouth,” she jokes, nudging him in the shoulder with her own, and subsequently knocking Richie’s body into Eddie’s. Eddie turns to glare at her balefully for it, but his lips are twitching uncontrollably at her tone of voice. “I didn’t know you could be so domestic. You’re quite the little housewife,” she teases him, gesturing broadly around the kitchen, and then nudging her chin out towards the living room. “I honestly assumed you must live in a pigsty, but Eddie has done a great job whipping you into shape.”</p><p>Richie gasps mock-offendedly, and says, “Why I never!” in a southern drawl, pitching his voice up high. “I don’t know <em>what</em> you are trying to insinuate,” he says primly, “But I <em>assure</em> you that I am a <em>proper </em>lady, and I don’t need no man to tell me how to behave!”</p><p>Eddie dissolves into giggles at the voice, leaning into Richie’s side and soaking in his warmth as the rest of them start to laugh too. Bill sounds as if he’s <em>dying</em> he’s laughing so hard, and Bev is giggling into Ben’s shoulder, her eyes wet with tears. Richie throws his arm over Eddie’s shoulders, and drags him in even closer, pressing a soft kiss to the top of his head.</p><p>Eddie tries to roll his eyes at the casual affection, aware that Mike is staring straight at him, but he can’t muster up any real annoyance and recognizes that the expression falls flat. With the way that Mike smiles at him, Eddie knows that he isn’t fooling anyone.</p><p>“Oh my <em>god</em>, you two are so cute,” Bev coos once she’s gotten herself back under control, and she props her chin in her hand to stare happily at them. Eddie immediately turns bright red and frowns at her.</p><p>“Not cute,” he mutters at the same time as Richie says, “Cute, cute, cute!” and pinches Eddie’s cheeks. Eddie turns and knocks Richie’s hand away from his face, and then shoves his wrist down onto the table. Richie is laughing even as he moans “ow, ow, ow, <em>ow</em>, <em>Eddie!”</em> but Eddie doesn’t let him go.</p><p>“You know I hate it when you do that!” Eddie whines, carefully avoiding looking at their friends. He can already imagine the looks on their faces, and Eddie is <em>embarrassed</em>, dammit! It’s bad enough when Richie calls him cute when they’re by themselves and Eddie can’t hide the way it makes him feel — it’s even worse to have their friends witness the way it makes Eddie absolutely <em>melt</em> for Richie.</p><p>“I’m surprised you haven’t killed him yet,” Ben jokes, staring meaningfully at the way Eddie is still holding down Richie’s hand.</p><p>“Believe me, it’s a close call at least three times a day,” Eddie replies dryly, finally releasing him. Richie draws his hand up to his chest to cradle it gently, making exaggerated wounded eyes at Eddie that Eddie ignores.</p><p>“Edd<em>ie</em>,” Richie whines, pouting at him, “You’re so <em>mean</em> to me,” he complains, knocking their shoulders together again. Rolling his eyes, Eddie leans in and smacks a quick kiss against Richie’s cheek until Richie wilts into him, smiling like an idiot.</p><p>Bev coos again, and Bill makes a retching sound. Eddie does his best to ignore them and grabs his water to sip at it, hiding his blush against the glass.</p><p>“Stan would hate you guys so much,” Mike laughs, shaking his head at the two of them, his voice only a little bit forced. He swallows thickly as he meets everyone else’s gazes, and says, “He’d say you’re disgusting, but we all know he’d really mean ‘I love you,’” Mike adds affectionately.</p><p>It takes a beat, but the rest of them laugh quietly as well, if a little solemnly, and glance at the empty table setting Richie had put out. He’d said they couldn’t have a proper Losers club meeting without Stan, and despite the way it had made Eddie feel at the time to see Richie preparing a seat that wouldn’t be filled, he’s grateful for it now. Eddie reaches over and squeezes Richie’s thigh, resting his hand there gently.</p><p>“I miss him,” Ben whispers softly, offering everyone a small smile.</p><p>“We all do,” Bill agrees quietly. They all quiet down for a moment, just soaking in the moment, thinking of Stan, before Bill finally clears his throat. Slowly, he raises his glass of wine into the air and says, “To Stan!”</p><p>“To Stan!” the rest of them say in unison, lifting their glasses in his honor.</p><p>After a long swallow, they each place their glasses back down onto the table, and smile at each other. Richie reaches down to squeeze Eddie’s thigh, and Eddie smiles up at him.</p><p>“So,” Ben starts, the first to interrupt the silence, “How are you doing, Eddie? Are you settling in okay?” he asks, waving his fork around in the air at them. The others nod their head in unison, repeating Ben’s question in one form or another:</p><p>“Richie better be treating you well,” says Bill.</p><p>“Are you sleeping alright?” asks Bev.</p><p>“How’s California treating you?” asks Mike.</p><p>Eddie smiles up at his friends and nods his head. “I’m good,” he replies, “I’m really good. California is… exactly what I needed,” he hedges, and, avoiding Richie’s eye, adds, “So is Richie.”</p><p>Eddie can feel it when Richie turns to look at him, and he doesn’t have to see Richie’s face to know what it’s doing — Richie has this way of looking at Eddie like he’s still in awe that he gets to have this, and Eddie doesn’t know what do with himself everytime he sees it. It’s an overwhelming feeling for both of them.</p><p>“Aww baby,” Richie murmurs, leaning in close to press a kiss to his cheek. He’s smiling, and it makes him smile too. “I knew you loved me,” Richie continues, and it’s obvious he’s <em>attempting</em> to sound teasing for their friends, but the words come out too sincere for anyone to fall for it.</p><p>Eddie’s heart flutters, and he feels his insides go all gooey, but the moment he catches sight of the looks on his friends faces — amused but affectionate — he squirms under the attention.</p><p>“Get off me,” Eddie grumbles, shoving at Richie’s chest lightly, his cheeks on fire. Richie doesn’t fight him, just laughs affectionately and pulls away without saying another word.</p><p>“I’m so happy for both of you,” Bev says warmly, her eyes shining. “You deserve to be happy,” she continues sincerely, reaching across the table to grasp Eddie’s hand in hers.</p><p>“Thanks, Bev,” Eddie manages to croak out in response, a lump in his throat, because while he knows what Bev is saying is true, it’s still difficult for him to internalize sometimes.</p><p>It’s Richie who eventually changes the subject, turning to the others and asking them what’s going on with them.</p><p>“Well, I’ve got a new contract in Dubai,” Ben tells them, shrugging modestly when the others cheer. “I’ve gotta head out there for a couple of weeks next Friday, so I won’t be around much, but…” he trails off, looks at Beverly softly, and reaches out to grasp tightly to her hand, like he doesn't want to leave her.</p><p>“But he’ll have cell reception, so don’t be afraid to harass him,” Beverly teases, gripping Ben back just as tightly.</p><p>Mike tells them about his tour of the United States, and how he’s been interviewing the locals everywhere he goes. He admits that he’s heard all kinds of amazing stories, and explains that he’s been thinking about starting a podcast.</p><p>“I just think that more people deserve to hear these stories,” Mike pitches hopefully, peering around at their friends like he wants their approval. “There’s so much <em>culture</em> out there that we’re missing out on, and I feel like if we just shared more of this stuff, there might not be so much violence in the world,” he continues passionately.</p><p>“I think you could really make a difference, man,” Richie says solemnly, and he shares a look with Mike like he understands exactly what it is that Mike is trying to do.</p><p>Mike meets his eyes, and nods at him, a silent conversation moving between them that Eddie isn’t privy to.</p><p>“And I’m about to launch my new summer line,” Bev announces excitedly, deftly avoiding the topic of the current legal minefield she’d been navigating for months surrounding both her divorce and her company. “All the designs are based on that summer,” she explains simply, obviously referring to the summer of ‘89 when all of this had started, “Because, despite everything, that was the best summer of my life.”</p><p>Eddie feels warm all the way down to his toes, because it was the best summer of his life too.</p><p>“Each look was inspired by one of you,” Bev admits brightly, and her eyes are sparkling as she looks at all of them, “and I fully plan on sending each of you your own special outfit.”</p><p>Eddie doesn’t even get the chance to consider what his might be before Bev meets Richie’s eye and winks at him. Eddie <em>immediately</em> lights up bright red, and turns a murderous glare onto Richie.</p><p>“I’ve got this really cute pair of little red shorts that I think will look <em>amazing</em> on you, Eds,” Bev teases all too knowingly.</p><p>“<em>Richie</em>,” Eddie hisses, but Richie isn’t looking at him. He’s an entirely darker shade of red than Eddie is — even brighter than those damn shorts were — and he doesn’t seem capable of meeting <em>anyone’s</em> gazes.</p><p>Eddie knows what Richie thought about those shorts — he’d admitted to Eddie that they’d kind of been Richie’s sexual awakening, and Eddie can’t even begin to <em>imagine</em> why he might have shared that information with Beverley, but he kind of wants to kill him for it.</p><p>It seems like all the rest of their friends seem to know as well, because as Eddie goes to kick Richie under the chair, the rest of their friends burst into amused laughter. Eddie doesn’t know whether to laugh or cry, and before he can launch into an argument with Richie over it, Richie cuts him off to pointedly, and very loudly, ask Bill, “So I heard you were offered another movie deal?”</p><p>Eddie slumps back in his seat, defeated. He’ll let Richie get away with it, for now at least. He makes no promises to himself about not bringing it up again when they go to bed.</p><p>“Oh, yeah!” Bill exclaims, as if he’d forgotten all about it. He composes himself quickly, red in the face from all of his laughing, and says, “That reminds me. The casting director asked me to let him know if I had any names in mind for any of the characters, and, well, if you’d be interested Rich…” Bill offers, trailing off and staring at Richie in question.</p><p>Completely distracted from his previous anger, Eddie looks at Richie with wide eyes, waiting for his answer, but Richie seems appropriately stunned. He stares at Bill blankly for a long moment, before bursting into a bright grin. “What, you want this ol’ mug to star in one of your movies, Bill?” Richie teases loudly, putting on a show. “You must really be desperate if you’re asking me,” he jokes, avoiding the question entirely with a self-deprecating joke. It’s obvious enough to all of them that Richie is deflecting, and the slight hysteria to Richie’s voice is answer enough for Bill, who merely grins at him.</p><p>“You can come down to the office with me on Monday, we can talk about it then,” he replies easily, turning away from Richie and changing the subject to the actual script for <em>The Glowing</em> and how he’s already thinking about a new ending for the movie.</p><p>Eddie reaches over to squeeze Richie’s fingers between his, but doesn’t say a word. He’s just thankful to Bill for the offer, because in the last few months, Richie’s been doing a lot of voice acting gigs, and has admitted to wanting to try his hand at acting. Eddie doesn’t know if Bill <em>knows</em> that, but even if he didn’t, the offer means a lot to both of them.</p><p>The conversation continues jovially, with Richie mocking Bill for his terrible endings, and Ben piping in with suggestions for the set. Eddie sits back quietly and watches, sipping at his glass of water. He takes a moment, when the others are distracted, to check in with himself the way his new therapist has been pushing him to do over the past few weeks.</p><p>He feels <em>good</em>, content to have all of his friends here surrounding him. It’s something he’d nearly given up in that weird, liminal space he’d inhabited while he was in a coma, and he’s so fucking glad that he chose to <em>live</em>, because he’s never been happier.</p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>Come hang out with me on tumblr at <a href="https://fandomsalive.tumblr.com/post/643571279984754688/guide-me-home">fandomsalive!</a></p></blockquote></div></div>
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